Amanda Knox Reflects on Her Trial

Power is so scary. Like that kind of power. The power and also the influence and sort of cronyism, like being deeply attached to the criminal justice system for many, many years over there, being respected and being a part of this investigative world where there are all the cops and they're all just like, they know each other and, you know, they look out for each other. The fact that they didn't change their story once they had all the DNA evidence of that Rudy guy and then it was all over. They didn't go, okay, we've made a mistake and instead they doubled down. And not only that, but didn't go after him for the murder. Well, they did. But they didn't convict him of the murder, I should say. So what did they convict him of? So they convicted him of her rape because it was only his DNA that was found inside of her body and they convicted him of conspiracy to commit murder. So basically taking part in a murder but not being the one to actually plunge the knife. But this was a fabrication by the, this is the prosecutor's idea. Yes. That he was there with Rafael and that you guys held her down. Yes. So they say that the scenario that my prosecutor painted and he painted a few different scenarios because he couldn't really, like his imagination was going wild and there wasn't a lot of actual, obviously, there wasn't any evidence to support any of them. But he kept thinking, okay, it's near, it's the day after Halloween. So maybe it's a satanic sexual ritual. We know that there's some kind of sex thing involved. We know that Amanda is like, well, we know. We know that Amanda has sex with people. So she's probably a sexually obsessed person and Meredith looked down on her for being a sexually obsessed person. So what is likely to have happened in his brain is that I was hanging out with Rafael and Rudy, Meredith comes home. She starts scolding me for my bad morals. And then I'm like, you know what, bitch, we're going to rape you and kill you. That's his scenario. And it's so unfortunate on so many levels because it's, I mean, it says more about him than it says about anyone else that he would imagine that that's just how people react to each other. And this was not his initial idea though, right? Was this his initial idea? I mean, his initial idea was that I was involved somehow. He didn't know how, but he thought that I was involved somehow. I knew something. I was covering up for someone. And that's why he interrogated me for 53 hours over five days. Which is really scary that they can do that, right? It's like you can get someone to say a lot of things if you can get alone with them in a room, scare the fuck out of them, and just torture them. Well, I'm glad you know that because a lot of people don't know that. You can get people to crack. Oh, absolutely. People crack when they get pulled over by the cops for speeding. Oh, yeah. People crack for all kinds of things. They crack if they have a joint in their glove box. People crack. When authority is scaring you, coming down on you, and in your case, they actually hit you a couple of times. And you're 20, right? I was 20. Your brain isn't even fully formed. My brain isn't fully formed. My friend had just been murdered. I was alone in a foreign country. And people who I was entrusting my life and safety to were screaming at me that I was wrong, that I was never going to see my family again, that I was super traumatized, that I had seen something so horrible that I must have just completely blocked it out. And here's a scenario that would explain that. Look, you have a text message from your boss, Patrick Lumumba. You must have met him that night. You must have seen him murder Meredith. Just admit it. Just admit it. Remember, remember, remember. The gross thing about it was they kept telling me to remember. They didn't even tell me to admit it. They were telling me that I just couldn't remember it. And I had to remember, or else I was never going to see my family again. So were you thinking that you just had to tell them whatever they wanted to hear, just so you could get out of there? Honestly, I started to question my own sanity. I started to believe them that I must have witnessed something horrible. And I just couldn't remember it. And that's the only explanation for why they would treat me that way. How long did that take before you think you started questioning your sanity? So I was a few hours into that final interrogation that was in the middle of the night. I was not prepared to be interrogated at all, because honestly, they didn't even call me in that night. They called my boyfriend, Rafaelay. But I was staying with him. And I was afraid to be alone at home, because a murder was on the loose. And so I went with him. And I was waiting in the lobby, like by the elevator, waiting for him to come out from questioning. And then they brought me in and just went on and on and on. And so I cracked eventually. So the thing that cracked me, too, was they brought in an interpreter, right? Someone who actually spoke English. Because for a long time, I was just talking to people in Italian. And I was worried that I wasn't even comprehensible. I thought that the reason why they were yelling at me was because I was doing something wrong. I just wasn't explaining myself correctly. How fluent were you at the time? I mean, I had been there for like five weeks. So I was- And you took Italian before? I had taken Italian for a year before. So I was about as fluent as, I like to say I had about the fluency of a 10-year-old. But I think that that's even generous, because I could speak in certain tenses. My vocabulary was totally limited, though. So there were limited things that I actually had the words to say. And I remember even when I, shortly after I was interrogated and signed the statements that they had written up for me, they finally stopped yelling at me. They left me alone. I had a moment to just be off to the side, quiet to myself. And I was like, oh my god, what just happened? Everything is wrong. This is all wrong. I need to tell them that it's all wrong. And I can't just go up in front of a jury right now and say, this is the person who did it. I saw him do it. I don't actually remember that. And I told them, I need to tell you. I need to tell you. And they were like, no, you'll remember. Don't worry about it. We don't need to talk anymore. You'll remember. Just stay over there and keep remembering. And I was like, no, I'm not remembering. I'm not remembering. And eventually, I asked them, please give me a piece of paper, because they weren't listening to me. So I wrote on this piece of paper, I'm so confused. They were yelling at me, I can't actually testify to this. And I gave it to them. And I was like, here's a gift. Because I didn't have the word for here's my recantation. I was just like, I'm giving this to you. I need you to hear me. And they were like, OK, whatever. We're taking you to jail. Actually, they didn't even tell me they were taking me to jail. They were telling me that I was being taken to a holding place for my own protection and that I was an important witness. So they didn't tell you that you were being taken to jail because you were one of the people they were accusing. No, I was already in prison before I was ever actually told you are suspected for the killing of Meredith Kirchherr. I was already in prison. How long had you known this Meredith girl for? A few weeks. And you'd met her just because you had all moved there at the same time? Yeah, yeah. You were sharing a place together? Yeah, so she had moved in before me. But it was basically there were two rooms to let in this little house that was right next to the university. And we both happened to pick a flyer. And did you guys hang out a lot? Did you know her well? Was she a good friend or was she just someone you lived with? She was like a budding friend. Like we definitely hung out. We would go to pizza together. I remember we went to like there's this famous chocolate festival that's where they would like take huge refrigerator sized blocks of chocolate and like carve them, which was super cool. I'm very into that. And we would go and check that out together. But we weren't like the best of friends. Like she had a friend group of other young women from Great Britain that she hung out with a lot more than she hung out with me. But that isn't to say that we didn't go out dancing together or go out to dinner together. We definitely did that. The moment you found out that she had been murdered, what was that like? It's confusing because I knew that something was wrong as soon as I came home and I found that there was a window broken into and Meredith wasn't answering her phone. But I didn't understand what was wrong. I didn't know. And when the police came in and broke down her door and everyone started screaming, I didn't see into her room. I never actually saw her body. And so I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know if that was Meredith in the room. In fact, I remember at the first thing that Philomena, one of my roommates started yelling was a foot, a foot. And I was like, oh my God, is there like a severed foot in Meredith's room? Like, I don't know what's going on. She's Philomena is hysterical. And I don't know what's going on. Everyone's yelling in Italian, speaking really quickly. I don't understand. So I actually was relying on Raphael to translate for me, like what is going on? He was like, I don't know, let me figure it out. And we were all like shoved out of the house. And finally someone is like, it's Meredith, it's Meredith and she's dead. And I was like, oh my God. Like it was outside of the house that someone was telling me she's, her body was in there. And someone told me that there was all this blood. I remember not actually knowing like how she had died until I went to the police office and I asked, I was like being questioned. And one of the police officers was like, and so like I sort of learned over the course of that day, these, the details of it, but I didn't fully understand like what had really happened. Like as far as I knew, you know, she, she, some, I mean, it was clear that there was a break in, like the window had been broken into one of, it was Philomena's room. All of her stuff was all over the place. It wasn't clear to me what had happened though. And it wasn't until over the course of that whole day and piecing together what I was hearing that I understood the gravity of the situation that she had been sexually assaulted, that she had been stabbed to death, that it was a struggle. It was all, it was all like, I remember the first thought and it's a guilty thought that I had. I remember thinking, thank God I wasn't home because that could have been me. And a part of me like over time felt really guilty about that thought because I thought maybe if I was home and there had been two of us, maybe the outcome would have been different. Maybe we would have been able to fend him off together. But here's an athletic guy wielding a knife. I'm not sure that we would have. And maybe I would have been dead too. So it's kind of a thought that comes back to mind a lot when I think about this and how fortuitous it was that I just happened to be in this brand new romance and hanging out with my new boyfriend all the time, every waking moment that I could. And that's what happened. It's hard for me to imagine the jolt of a 20-year-old life where you are overseas, going to school, involved in this new romantic relationship and then out of nowhere, boom, you're a suspect in a murder. Well, and what's interesting is I didn't know. I didn't know that I was a suspect. The boom for me was someone close to me just died and that could have been me. And now what? And then it was all those things that piled on, they get piling on. And then I'm in jail, I'm thinking, oh my God, this is all just a horrible misunderstanding. I'm sure they're gonna figure it out sometime. I remember the first two years of my imprisonment, I was convinced that it was all just a big misunderstanding and somebody would figure it out. And I was convinced that there was no possible way that people could actually believe that I was involved. Even just not because it's me, but because there wasn't any evidence there. It was so patently obvious to me that this idea of me, this foxy-noxy character that was being constructed in the courtroom, this Luciferina, this idea of a person was obviously made up. It was so obvious to me and yet... It seemed like the Italian media just ran with it though. Oh yeah, yeah. And that was one of the big regrets that especially my family had was at the very beginning, they were advised to not speak to the media at all because they were just going to make a field day of it. In the same way that there was never going... Once I was accused, there was never gonna be anything that I could do to prove my innocence in the eyes of people. My lawyers were also worried that there was nothing my family could say, but that would not be twisted and turned into something that would just further fuel the scandal-mongering. And what that meant was there was a void. There was a void in which who I was, my very identity could be reconstructed out of total fantasy that was the only thing that was... The only reason why it was being constructed was to further the scandal and to sell more papers. Like that was the reason why... It wasn't the public interest of the story that kept the sun in Britain reporting on this case. Like they were reporting on whether or not I ate pizza. I think the day is leading up to my arrest. It's just selling papers. It's just selling papers. Watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify.