Amanda Knox
Amanda Marie Knox is an American activist and author. She came to international prominence after being falsely accused and imprisoned for the November 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy. She was convicted of the murder in 2009 and was sentenced to 26 years in prison. In 2011, the conviction was overturned and Knox was released, whereupon she returned to America. In 2013, her acquittal was overturned after a successful prosecution appeal and a retrial was ordered. In 2014, an appeals court in Florence convicted Knox of murder for a second time. In 2015, the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation definitively acquitted Knox of Kercher's murder.
Knox called the police upon returning to her and Kercher's apartment after spending the night with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and finding Kercher's bedroom door locked and blood in the bathroom. During the police interrogations that followed, Knox allegedly implicated herself and her employer, Patrick Lumumba, in the murder. Initially, Knox, Sollecito, and Lumumba were all arrested for Kercher's murder, but Lumumba was soon released. Pre-trial publicity in Italian media, which was repeated by international media, portrayed Knox in a negative light. A guilty verdict at Knox's initial trial and her 26-year sentence caused international controversy, because American forensic experts thought evidence at the crime scene was incompatible with her involvement. A known burglar, Rudy Guede, was arrested in December 2007 after 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.
Knox became an autobiographical author and activist, producing memoirs and commentary related to her case and wrongly convicted persons. Her first book Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir was released in 2013. In 2018, she began hosting The Scarlet Letter Reports, a television series, which examined the "gendered nature of public shaming". Her second memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning, was published in 2025.
Early life
Amanda Knox was born July 9, 1987, in Seattle, Washington, the eldest of three daughters born to Edda Mellas, a mathematics teacher originally from Germany, and Curt Knox, a vice president of finance for Macy's. Knox and her sisters were raised in West Seattle. Her parents were divorced when she was 10 years old; her mother then married Chris Mellas, an information-technology consultant.Knox first traveled to Italy at age 15, on a family holiday. During that trip, she visited Rome, Pisa, the Amalfi Coast, and the ruins of Pompeii. Upon reading Under the Tuscan Sun, which was given to her by her mother, she grew more interested in the country.
Knox graduated from the Seattle Preparatory School in 2005 and then studied linguistics at the University of Washington. In 2007, she made the dean's list at the university. She worked at 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 year, because he found her too naïve.
Italy
Via della Pergola 7
Knox had come to Perugia for its universities and because it had fewer tourists than Florence, a more popular destination for foreign students. Knox lived in a four-bedroom, ground-floor apartment at Via della Pergola 7 with three other women. Her flatmates were Meredith Kercher and two Italian trainee lawyers in their late twenties, one of whom was Filomena Romanelli. Kercher and Knox moved in on September 10 and 20, 2007, respectively, meeting each other for the first time. 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 preferred to socialize with Italians.Giacomo Silenzi, who lived in a walk-out semi-basement apartment of the building, shared an interest in music with Kercher and Knox and often visited their apartment. Returning home at 2 a.m. one night in mid-October, Knox, Kercher, Silenzi, and another basement resident met a basketball court acquaintance of the Italians, Rudy Guede, in the basement apartment. At 4:30 a.m. Kercher left, saying she was going to bed, and Knox followed her out. Guede spent the rest of the night in the basement. Knox recalled a second night out with Kercher and Silenzi in which Guede joined them in the basement apartment.
Three weeks before her death, Kercher went with Knox 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 her time at his flat, a five-minute walk from Via della Pergola 7.
Discovery of Meredith Kercher's body
November 1 was a public holiday, and the Italians living in the building were away. It is believed that after watching a movie at a friend's house, Kercher returned home around 9 pm that evening and was alone in the building. Just after midday on November 2, Knox called Kercher's English phone. But contrary to her normal practice, the call was not answered. 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 going to the Via della Pergola 7 apartment earlier that morning, Knox had noticed an open front door, bloodstains in the bathroom, and Kercher's bedroom door locked. Knox and Sollecito then went to Via della Pergola 7, and upon getting no answer from Kercher, unsuccessfully tried to break in the bedroom door, leaving it noticeably damaged. At 12:47 p.m., Knox called her mother, who advised her to contact the police.Sollecito called the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie of Italy, getting through at 12:51 p.m. He was recorded telling them there had 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 in 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 result of its ringing when Knox called it. On discovering Kercher's English phone had been found dumped, Romanelli demanded that the policemen force Kercher's bedroom door open, but they did not 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.
Investigation
The first detectives on the scene were Monica Napoleoni and her superior Marco Chiacchiera. Napoleoni conducted the initial interviews and quizzed Knox about her failure to immediately raise the alarm, which was later widely seen as an anomalous feature of Knox's behavior. Knox said that she had spent the night of 1 November with Sollecito at his flat, smoking marijuana, watching the French film Amélie, and having sex. Sollecito told police he could not remember if Knox was with him that evening or not. According to Knox, Napoleoni had been hostile to her from the outset. Chiacchiera discounted the signs of a break-in, deeming them clearly faked by the killer. The police were not told the extent of Kercher's relationship with Silenzi in initial interviews. On November 4, Chiacchiera was quoted as saying that someone known to Kercher might have been let into the apartment and be responsible for her murder. The same day, Guede is believed to have left Perugia.Interviews, arrest, and arraignment
Over the 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 been cancelled, so she had stayed over at Sollecito's apartment, only going back to the apartment she shared with Kercher on the morning the body was discovered. On the night of November 5, Knox voluntarily went to the police station. Knox was not provided with legal counsel, as Italian law only mandates the appointment of a lawyer for someone suspected of a crime. Knox said she had requested a lawyer but was told it would make things worse for her.Knox testified that prior to the trial she had spent hours maintaining her original story, that she had been with Sollecito at his flat all night and had no knowledge of the murder, but a group of police would not believe her.
Police arrested Knox, Sollecito, and Patrick Lumumba on November 6, 2007. They were taken into custody and charged with the murder. Customers who Lumumba had been serving at his bar on the night of the murder gave him an alibi, and Lumumba was released. Chiacchiera, who thought the arrests were premature, dropped out of the investigation soon afterward, leaving Napoleoni in charge of a major investigation for the first time in her career.
Knox's first meeting with her legal counsel was on November 11.
After his bloodstained fingerprints were found on bedding under Kercher's body, Guede was extradited back to Italy. Guede, Knox, and Sollecito were then charged with committing the murder together. On November 30, a panel of three judges endorsed the charges and ordered Knox and Sollecito held in detention pending a trial.
Knox became the subject of unprecedented pre-trial media coverage because of leaks from the prosecution, including a best-selling Italian book whose author imagined or invented incidents that were purported to have occurred in Knox's private life.