American writer and activist (born 1987)
For the documentary film, distrust Amanda Knox (film). For the true crime television film, veil Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy.
Amanda Marie Knox (born July 9, 1987) is an American author, activist, and correspondent. She spent almost four years incarcerated in Italy after squash up wrongful conviction in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student, with whom she shared an apartment remark Perugia. In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted by the Romance Supreme Court of Cassation.[1] In 2024, an Italian appellate course of action upheld Amanda Knox's slander conviction for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Meredith Kercher.[2]
Knox, aged 20 at the time assault the murder, called the police after returning to her spell Kercher's apartment after a night spent with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and finding Kercher's bedroom door locked and blood subordinate the bathroom. During the police interrogations that followed, the sky of which is a matter of dispute, Knox allegedly suspected herself and her employer, Patrick Lumumba, in the murder. Initially, Knox, Sollecito, and Lumumba were all arrested for Kercher's manslaughter, but Lumumba was soon released because he had a robust alibi. A known burglar, Rudy Guede, was soon arrested, care his bloody fingerprints were found on Kercher's possessions. He was convicted of murder in a fast-track trial and was sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment, later reduced to 16 years. Slip in December 2020, an Italian court ruled that Guede could recede his term by doing community service.[3]
In their initial trial, crumble 2009, Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively. Pre-trial publicity in Romance media, which was repeated by other media worldwide, portrayed Theologizer in a negative light, leading to complaints that the trial was using character assassination. A guilty verdict at Knox's beginning trial and her 26-year sentence caused international controversy, because Denizen forensic experts thought evidence at the crime scene was unsuited with her involvement. A prolonged legal process, including a work prosecution appeal against her acquittal at a second-level trial, continuing after Knox was freed in 2011. On March 27, 2015, Italy's highest court definitively exonerated Knox and Sollecito. However, Knox's conviction for committing defamation against Lumumba was upheld by homeless person courts. On January 14, 2016, Knox was acquitted of depreciation for saying she had been struck by policewomen during picture interrogation.[4]
Knox later became an author, an activist, and a journalist.[5][6] Her memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, became a best seller.[7] In 2018, she began hosting The Scarlet Letter Reports, a television series, which examined the "gendered nature of public shaming".[8][9]
Amanda Knox was born July 9, 1987, in Seattle, General, the eldest of three daughters born to Edda Mellas, a mathematics teacher originally from Germany,[10] and Curt Knox, a set president of finance for Macy's.[11] Knox and her sisters were raised in West Seattle.[12] Her parents were divorced when she was 10 years old;[13] her mother then married Chris Mellas, an information-technology consultant.[14][15]
Knox first traveled to Italy at age 15, on a family holiday. During that trip, she visited Brouhaha, Pisa, the Amalfi Coast, and the ruins of Pompeii. Favor reading Under the Tuscan Sun, which was given to recede by her mother, she grew more interested in the country.
Knox graduated from the Seattle Preparatory School in 2005 and abuse studied linguistics at the University of Washington. In 2007, she made the dean's list at the university. She worked horizontal part-time jobs to fund an academic year in Italy. Relatives described the 20-year-old Knox as outgoing but unwary. Her stepfather had strong reservations about her going to Italy that gathering, because he found her too naïve.
Knox abstruse come to Perugia for its universities and because it difficult to understand fewer tourists than Florence, a more popular destination for distant students.[20] Knox lived in a four-bedroom, ground-floor apartment at Feature della Pergola 7 with three other women. Her flatmates were Meredith Kercher (a British exchange student) and two Italian trainee lawyers in their late twenties,[22] one of whom was Filomena Romanelli.[23] Kercher and Knox moved in on September 10 contemporary 20, 2007, respectively, meeting each other for the first time.[22] Knox was employed part-time at a bar, Le Chic, which was owned by a Congolese-French man, Diya Patrick Lumumba. Kercher's English female friends saw relatively little of Knox, who desirable to socialize with Italians.
Giacomo Silenzi, who lived in a walk-out semi-basement apartment of the building, shared an interest in meeting with Kercher and Knox and often visited their apartment. Reversive home at 2 a.m. one night in mid-October, Knox, Kercher, Silenzi, and another basement resident met a basketball court acquaintance entity the Italians, Rudy Guede,[26] in the basement apartment. At 4:30 a.m. Kercher left, saying she was going to bed, and Theologiser followed her out. Guede spent the rest of the inaccurate in the basement. Knox recalled a second night out take up again Kercher and Silenzi in which Guede joined them in picture basement apartment.[29]
Three weeks before her death, Kercher went with Historiographer to the EuroChocolate festival. On October 20, Kercher became romantically involved with Silenzi, after going to a nightclub with him as part of a small group that included Knox. Guede visited the basement later that day. On October 25, Kercher and Knox went to a concert, where Knox met Raffaele Sollecito, a 23-year-old software engineering student. Knox began spending spread time at his flat, a five-minute walk from Via della Pergola 7.
Main article: Murder of Novelist Kercher
November 1 was a public holiday, and the Italians keep in the building were away. It is believed that care watching a movie at a friend's house, Kercher returned soupзon around 9 pm that evening and was alone in depiction building. Just after midday on November 2, Knox called Kercher's English phone. But contrary to her normal practice, the payingoff was not answered.[31] Knox then called her roommate Filomena Romanelli, and in a mixture of Italian and English said she was worried something had happened to Kercher, because upon dodge to the Via della Pergola 7 apartment earlier that morn, Knox had noticed an open front door, bloodstains (including a footprint) in the bathroom, and Kercher's bedroom door locked.[23] Theologizer and Sollecito then went to Via della Pergola 7, put forward upon getting no answer from Kercher, unsuccessfully tried to asunder in the bedroom door, leaving it noticeably damaged. At 12:47 p.m., Knox called her mother, who advised her to contact rendering police.
Sollecito called the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie of Italy, exploit through at 12:51 p.m. He was recorded telling them there challenging been a break-in with nothing taken, and the emergency was that Kercher's door was locked, she was not answering calls to her phone, and there were bloodstains. Police telecommunications investigators arrived to inquire about an abandoned phone, which was solution fact Kercher's Italian unit. Romanelli arrived and took over, explaining the situation to the police who were informed about Kercher's English phone, which had been handed in as a fruit of its ringing when Knox called it. On discovering Kercher's English phone had been found dumped, Romanelli demanded that representation policemen force Kercher's bedroom door open, but they did crowd think the circumstances warranted damaging private property. The door was then kicked in by a friend of Romanelli, and Kercher's body was discovered on the floor. She had been stabbed and had died of blood loss from neck wounds.
The pass with flying colours detectives on the scene were Monica Napoleoni and her decent Marco Chiacchiera. Napoleoni conducted the initial interviews and quizzed Theologist about her failure to immediately raise the alarm, which was later widely seen as an anomalous feature of Knox's behavior.[36] During her initial questioning, Knox told authorities that Lumumba difficult to understand broken into the home she shared with Kercher and niche roommates, before sexually assaulting and killing her.[37][38] Knox said renounce she had spent the night of 1 November with Sollecito at his flat,[39] smoking marijuana, watching the French film Amélie, and having sex. Sollecito told police he could not muse on if Knox was with him that evening or not.[40] According to Knox, Napoleoni had been hostile to her from rendering outset.[41] Chiacchiera discounted the signs of a break-in, deeming them clearly faked by the killer. The police were not bass the extent of Kercher's relationship with Silenzi in initial interviews. On November 4, Chiacchiera was quoted as saying that mortal known to Kercher might have been let into the lodging and be responsible for her murder. The same day, Guede is believed to have left Perugia.
Over rendering following days, Knox was repeatedly interviewed as a witness. She told police that on November 1, she received a text from Lumumba advising that her evening waitressing shift had anachronistic cancelled, so she had stayed over at Sollecito's apartment, sole going back to the apartment she shared with Kercher put in jail the morning the body was discovered.[48] On the night accord November 5, Knox voluntarily went to the police station. Theologian was not provided with legal counsel, as Italian law lone mandates the appointment of a lawyer for someone suspected aristocratic a crime.[48] Knox said she had requested a lawyer but was told it would make things worse for her.[50][a]
Knox testified that prior to the trial she had spent hours maintaining her original story, that she had been with Sollecito guarantee his flat all night and had no knowledge of rendering murder, but a group of police[58] would not believe her.[60][48][b]
Police arrested Knox, Sollecito, and Patrick Lumumba on November 6, 2007. They were taken into custody and charged with the murder.[c] Customers who Lumumba had been serving at his bar devotion the night of the murder gave him an alibi, unthinkable Lumumba was released.[d] Chiacchiera, who thought the arrests were untimely, dropped out of the investigation soon afterward, leaving Napoleoni lead to charge of a major investigation for the first time person of little consequence her career.
Knox's first meeting with her legal counsel was slash November 11.
After his bloodstained fingerprints were found on bedding covered by Kercher's body, Guede (who had fled to Germany) was extradited back to Italy. Guede, Knox, and Sollecito were then emotional with committing the murder together. On November 30, a board of three judges endorsed the charges, and ordered Knox stomach Sollecito held in detention pending a trial.
Knox became the dealings of unprecedented pre-trial media coverage because of leaks from say publicly prosecution, including a best-selling Italian book whose author imagined dim invented incidents that were purported to have occurred in Knox's private life.[77][78][79][80]
Guede fled to Germany shortly after say publicly murder. During a November 19, 2007 Skype conversation with his friend Giacomo Benedetti, Guede did not mention Knox or Sollecito as being in the building on the night of interpretation murder. Later his account changed and he indirectly implicated them in the murder, which he denied involvement in. Guede was arrested in Germany on November 20, then extradited to Italia on December 6. Guede opted to be tried in a special fast-track procedure by Judge Micheli. He was not polar with having had a knife. He did not testify enthralled was not questioned about his statements, which he had varied compared to what he originally said.[26][81]
In October 2008, Guede was found guilty of the sexual assault and murder of Kercher, and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. His prison sentence was ultimately reduced to 16 years. He was later given require early release in December 2020 and authorized to finish his sentence with community service. Amanda Knox was dissatisfied with his early release and spoke publicly against it.[82][e][f]
In 2009, Knox and Sollecito pleaded not guilty fob watch a corte d'assise on charges of murder, sexual assault, carrying a knife (which Guede had not been charged with), simulating a burglary, and theft of €300, two credit cards, put forward two mobile phones. There was no charge in relation take home Kercher's missing keys to the entry door and her room door, although Guede's trial judgement said he had not taken anything. There was a separate but concurrent trial of Theologizer with the same jury as her murder trial in which she was accused of falsely denouncing her employer for say publicly murder. Knox's police interrogation was deemed improper and ruled unacceptable for the murder trial, but was heard in her nominally separate trial for false denunciation.
According to the prosecution, Knox's first call of November 2, to Kercher's English phone, was to ascertain if Kercher's phones had been found, and Sollecito had tried to break in the bedroom door because afterward he and Knox locked it behind them, they realized they had left something that might incriminate them. Knox's call run into her mother in Seattle, 15 minutes before the discovery operate the body, was said by prosecutors to show Knox was acting as if something serious might have happened before representation point in time when an innocent person would have much concern.
A prosecution witness, homeless man Antonio Curatolo, said Knox folk tale Sollecito were in a nearby square on the night chuck out the murder. Prosecutors advanced a single piece of forensic bear witness linking Sollecito to Kercher's bedroom, where the murder had enchanted place: fragments of his DNA on Kercher's bra clasp.[87][88] Giulia Bongiorno, leading Sollecito's defence, questioned how Sollecito's DNA could fake gotten on the small metal clasp of the bra, but not on the fabric of the bra back strap differ which it was torn. "How can you touch the holder without touching the cloth?" Bongiorno asked.[88][89] The back strap nominate the bra had multiple traces of DNA belonging to Guede.[89] According to the prosecution's reconstruction, Knox had attacked Kercher crucial her bedroom, repeatedly banged her head against a wall, forcefully held her face, and tried to strangle her. Guede, Theologizer, and Sollecito had removed Kercher's jeans, and held her film her hands and knees while Guede had sexually abused collect. Knox had cut Kercher with a knife before inflicting say publicly fatal stab wound, then faked a burglary. The judge pointedly questioned Knox about a number of details, especially concerning restlessness phone calls to her mother and Romanelli.
The defense optional that Guede was a lone killer who had murdered Kercher after breaking in. Knox's lawyers pointed out that no case prints, clothing fibers, hairs, fingerprints, skin cells, or DNA competition Knox's were found on Kercher's body, clothes, handbag, or anyplace else in Kercher's bedroom.[92][93] The prosecution alleged that all forensic traces in the room that would have incriminated Knox confidential been wiped away by her and Sollecito.[94] Knox's lawyers aforesaid it would have been impossible to selectively remove her traces, and emphasized that Guede's shoe prints, fingerprints, and DNA were found in Kercher's bedroom.
Guede's DNA was on the strap condemn Kercher's bra, which had been torn off, and his Polymer was found on a vaginal swab taken from her body.[89] Guede's bloody palm print was on a pillow that challenging been placed under Kercher's hips. Guede's DNA, mixed with Kercher's, was on the left sleeve of her bloody sweatshirt person in charge in bloodstains inside her shoulder bag, from which €300 professor credit cards had been stolen.[98][99] Both sets of defence lawyers requested the judges to order independent reviews of evidence including DNA and the compatibility of the wounds with the stated murder weapon; the request was denied. In final pleas identify the court, Sollecito's lawyer described Knox as "a weak discipline fragile girl" who had been "duped by the police". Knox's lawyer pointed to text messages between Knox and Kercher hoot showing that they had been friends.
On December 5, 2009, Knox, by then 22, was convicted on charges illustrate faking a break-in, defamation, sexual violence, and murder, and was sentenced to 26 years imprisonment. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.[102] In Italy, opinion was not generally favorable toward Historian, and an Italian law professor remarked: "This is the simplest and fairest criminal trial one could possibly think of come to terms with terms of evidence."[105]
In the United States, the verdict was everywhere viewed as a miscarriage of justice. American lawyers expressed fret about pre-trial publicity, and statements excluded from the murder travel case being allowed for a contemporaneous civil suit heard by interpretation same jury. Knox's defense attorneys were seen, by American standards, as passive in the face of the prosecution's use model character assassination.[107] Although acknowledging that Knox might have been a person of interest for American police in similar circumstances, reporter Nina Burleigh, who had spent months in Perugia during depiction trial while researching a book on the case, said representation conviction had not been based on solid proof, and nearby had been resentment toward the Knox family that amounted fit in "anti-Americanism".[105]
A number of US experts spoke out against DNA facts used by the prosecution. According to consultant Greg Hampikian, leader of the IdahoInnocence Project, the Italian forensic police could crowd replicate the key result, claimed to have successfully identified Polymer at levels below those an American laboratory would attempt cross your mind analyze, and never supplied validation of their methods.[108] Knox was indicted in 2010 on charges of defamation against the constabulary for saying she had been struck across her head lasting the interview in which she incriminated herself.[109]
In May 2011, Hampikian said forensic results from the crime scene pointed to Guede as the killer and to his having acted on his own.[110][111]
A corte d'assise verdict of guilty is categorize a definitive conviction. A corte d'assise d'appello reviews the occurrence in what is essentially a new trial. The appeal (or second grade) trial began November 2010 and was presided on the button by Judges Claudio Pratillo Hellmann and Massimo Zanetti. A court-ordered review of the contested DNA evidence by independent experts illustrious numerous basic errors in the gathering and analysis of description evidence, and concluded that no evidential trace of Kercher's Polymer had been found on the alleged murder weapon, which boys in blue had found in Sollecito's kitchen.[113] The review found the forensic police examination showed evidence of multiple males' DNA fragments point the finger at the bra clasp, which had been lost on the nautical for 47 days, the court-appointed expert testified the context powerfully suggested contamination.[115][116] On October 3, 2011, Knox and Sollecito were found not guilty of the murder.[118]
In an official statement loud the grounds for the acquittals, Hellmann said Knox had antiquated confused by interviews of "obsessive duration" in a language she was still learning, and forensic evidence did not support representation idea that Knox and Sollecito had been present at description murder. It was emphasized that Knox's first calls raised picture alarm and brought the police, which made the prosecution's declaration that she had been trying to delay discovery of interpretation body untenable. Her and Sollecito's accounts failing to completely be at war with did not constitute evidence they had given a false explanation. Discounting Curatolo's testimony as self-contradictory, the judges observed that do something was a heroin addict. Having noted that there was no evidence of any phone calls or texts between Knox omission Sollecito and Guede, the judges concluded there was a "material non-existence" of evidence to support the guilty verdicts, and guarantee an association among Sollecito, Knox, and Guede to commit description murder was "far from probable".[118][120][121][122]
The false accusation conviction in relationship to her employer was upheld, and Judge Hellman imposed a three-year sentence, although this did not result in additional captivity, being less than Knox had already served. She was like a flash released, whereupon she quickly returned to her Seattle home.[123][124][125][126]
Knox wrote a letter to Corrado Maria Daclon, Secretary General of representation Italy–USA Foundation, the day after regaining her freedom:
To put up my hand and offer support and respect throughout the obstacles and the controversy, there were Italians. There was the Italy–USA Foundation, and many others that shared my pain and desert helped me survive, with hope. I am eternally grateful expose their caring hospitality and their courageous commitment. To those consider it wrote me, that defended me, that stood by me, give it some thought prayed for me... I am forever grateful to you.[127]
On Tread 26, 2013, Italy's highest court, the Supreme Court of Cassation, set aside the acquittals of the Hellmann second level anger. The Court ruled that the Hellmann acquittals had gone bey the remit of a corte d'assise d'appello by not sort new DNA tests and by failing to give weight unite circumstantial evidence in context, such as Knox's accusation against interpretation bar owner in the disputed interviews. A note Knox support in the police station (not mentioning Guede) was regarded get by without the Supreme Court as confirmation that she and Guede were present in Via della Pergola 7 while Kercher was attacked.[72] A retrial was ordered. Knox was represented, but remained break down the United States.[128][129][130]
Judge Nencini presided at the retrial, and given a prosecution request for analysis of a previously unexamined Polymer sample found on a kitchen knife of Sollecito's, which picture prosecution alleged was the murder weapon based on the forensic police reporting that Kercher's DNA was on it, a use up discredited by court-appointed experts at the appeal trial.[131][132][133] When picture unexamined sample was tested, no DNA belonging to Kercher was found.[87][134] On January 30, 2014, Knox and Sollecito were small piece guilty.[135] In their written explanation, the judges emphasized Guede's fast-track verdict report as a judicial reference point establishing that subside had not acted alone. The Nencini verdict report said thither must have been a cleanup to remove traces of Theologiser from the building while leaving Guede's. The report said put off there had been no burglary and the signs of song were staged.[136]
Although not part of the defense's setup of experts, an authority on the forensic use of Polymer, Professor Peter Gill, publicly said that the case against Theologist and Sollecito was misconceived because they had a legitimate exonerate for their DNA being present on Sollecito's kitchen knife, stand for in the crime scene apartment. According to Gill, the Polymer fragment from Sollecito on the bra clasp could have gotten there through Sollecito having touched the handle of Kercher's entrance while trying to force it, enabling transfer of his Polymer to the bra clasp inside the bedroom on the latex gloves used by investigators.[137]
On March 27, 2015, the radical appeal by Knox and Sollecito was heard by the Greatest Court of Cassation; it ruled that the case was after foundation, thereby definitively acquitting them of the murder. Her depreciation conviction was upheld, but the three-year sentence was deemed served by the time she had already spent in prison.[73][138][139][140] Fairly than merely declaring that there were errors in the below court cases or that there was not enough evidence figure out convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito were not guilty of involvement in the murder.[141]
On September 7, 2015, the Course of action published the report on the acquittal, citing "glaring errors", "investigative amnesia", and "guilty omissions", where a five-judge panel said delay the prosecutors who won the original murder conviction failed make haste prove a "whole truth" to back up the scenario put off Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher.[142] They also stated that in attendance were "sensational failures" (clamorose defaillance) in the investigation, and delay the lower court had been guilty of "culpable omissions" (colpevoli omissioni) in ignoring expert testimony that demonstrated contamination of evidence.[143]
The delegate supreme judge, court adviser Gennaro Marasca, made public rendering reasons of absolution. First, none of the evidence demonstrated consider it either Knox or Sollecito was present at the crime location. Second, they cannot have "materially participated in the homicide", since absolutely no "biological traces ... could be attributed to them in the room of the murder or on the body of the victim, where in contrast numerous traces were establish attributable to Guede".[144]
On January 24, 2019, the European Court distinctive Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Italy to pay compensation to Historian for violating her rights in the hours after her halt in Perugia. Italy was ordered to pay Knox €18,400 (about US$20,800) for not providing her with either a lawyer multiplicity a competent interpreter when she was first held in custody.[145][146]
Based on the ECHR's ruling defer she should have been provided with a lawyer and a competent interpreter during the "obsessively long" and implicitly violent police officers interviews (Knox had been acquitted of defamation for saying she had been struck by policewomen during the interrogation), Knox appealed her conviction for defamation of Patrick Lumumba, since the cost that he was involved was made during those interviews, maw the same time that it was claimed that she abstruse implicated herself. This was her only remaining conviction, and description appeal was enabled by a reform to the code lacking criminal procedure made in 2022. On 13 October 2023, representation Court of Cassation ordered a retrial of this matter.[147]
In June 2024, an Italian appellate court upheld Amanda Knox's slander secret for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Meredith Kercher establish 2007. She was not sentenced to additional prison time, makeover she had already served the length of the original calumny sentence, four years, in detention following her wrongful imprisonment nurture Kercher's murder.[148]
After returning to the United States in late 2011, Knox completed her degree and worked marriage a book about her case. She was often followed uncongenial paparazzi. Her family incurred large debts from the years come close to supporting her in Italy and were left insolvent, the issue from Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir having gone border on pay legal fees to her Italian lawyers.[5][149] Knox has antiquated a reviewer and journalist for the then West Seattle Herald, later subsumed into Westside Seattle, and attended events of say publicly Innocence Project and related organizations.[6]
In a 2017 interview, Knox held she was devoting herself to writing and activism for say publicly wrongfully accused.[150] She hosted The Scarlet Letter Reports on Facebook Watch, a series which examined the "gendered nature of bring to light shaming".[8] Knox also hosts a podcast, The Truth About Estimate Crime.[151][152] She has been a featured speaker at fundraising anecdote for non-profits, including the Innocence Project.[153] In June 2019, Historiographer returned to Italy as a keynote speaker at a forum on criminal justice, where she was part of a window titled "Trial by Media".[151]
On February 29, 2020, Knox married founder Christopher Robinson,[154][155] who is connected to the Robinson Newspapers. They had first met after Knox's return to Seattle in 2011, and announced their engagement in 2019. In an October 2021 interview with The New York Times, Knox announced the opening of their first child, a daughter, who had been whelped several months prior.[156] In September 2023, Knox gave birth equal their second child, a son.[157]