'Waiting To Be Heard' No More, Amanda Knox Speaks Out

When 20-year-old Amanda Knox left for Italy in August 2007, it was supposed to be a carefree year studying abroad.

No one could have foreseen it ending in her being accused, tried and convicted in the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher.

The case, and Knox, became an international media sensation.

"I think that there was a lot of fantasy projected onto me," she tells weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden. "And that resulted in a re-appropriation and re-characterization of who I am."

Following a controversial trial led by a prosecutor accused of misdoings, Knox and her onetime boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, spent four years in prison before an Italian appeals court overturned the ruling.

Also convicted in Kercher's murder was a man named Rudy Guede. In his case, extensive DNA evidence linked him to the crime.

Knox returned home to Seattle, but in March 2013, the Italian Supreme Court annulled her acquittal and ordered a new review of the case.

It is uncertain what that will mean for Knox.

Now 25, Knox tells her story in a new memoir, Waiting to Be Heard.

Interview Highlights

On why she didn't leave Perugia, Italy, or call the American Embassy in the days after Kercher's murder

"It never occurred to me to worry that I would be a suspect; I didn't do it. And I was very much making myself available to the police so that I could help. But what's important is I thought my innocence was obvious. And even when they were screaming at me in my interrogation and calling me a liar, like, I could not believe what was happening to me was happening. I very much did not understand the kind of danger that I was in."

On her conviction

"After my conviction, I was devastated. I had never believed that I would be convicted. And so all of that time after my conviction, leading up to my acquittal, I was afraid to hope. Not even my innocence had saved me, and so I was afraid that my innocence would never save me."

On whether she has reached out to the Kercher family

"No, I haven't reached out to them personally. It's been a very complicated question for me about what is the right way to approach them. What I did do is I read John Kercher's book and it definitely confirmed to me that they are grieving intensely from this incredibly horrible thing that happened to their daughter. And I can tell that they are unconvinced of my innocence and that is this huge wall that I'm not sure how to confront."

On the Italian Supreme Court ordering a retrial

"It's looming over me — this horrendous thing that just never ends. I do not think that I will be convicted because there just simply is not that evidence. I just simply did not do it. I feel like I'm having to prove my innocence as opposed to have the prosecution prove my guilt."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.