On November 1, 2007, a man named Rudy Guede broke into a random home in Perugia, Italy, then raped and killed Meredith Kercher—a 21-year-old exchange student from the University of Leeds.
You might not even remember the names Rudy Guede and Meredith Kercher. But one name you will remember is Meredith’s roommate, Amanda Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle.
In the weeks and years after Kercher’s murder, the media and the prosecution concocted a narrative that Amanda, her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Guede had played a violent sex game leading to Kercher’s murder.
Amanda was portrayed as a deviant sex fiend, a slut, a killer, and a psychopath. The problem is that none of it was true. Amanda had only been dating Sollecito a week. She had never met Guede. And most importantly, she was not playing a sex game that led to Kercher’s death.
Amanda would end up spending a total of eight years on trial and four years in prison for a murder she did not commit.
And Kercher’s real murderer—Guede—would never be charged with killing Kercher alone. He’d spend only 13 years behind bars for this crime. And after his release in 2021, he would be accused of committing a similar crime again.
Here’s the part of the story most people don’t know: On the morning of November 5, 2007, Amanda Knox was taken into custody in Italy. She wasn’t given a lawyer or a translator. She wasn’t told that she was a suspect. She was questioned for 53 hours. She was struck by a police officer, gaslit, and pressured into signing a confession.
Now, 18 years since she was taken into custody, she has released a memoir called Free: My Search for Meaning to tell the full story of what happened in Perugia, how she fought for vindication, how the tabloids and credible news organizations villainized her, and what her life has been like since she was exonerated in 2015.
Today on Honestly, Bari asks Amanda Knox how she survived in prison, how she reintegrated into society, why she returned to Italy to confront the prosecutor who put her behind bars, why she chooses forgiveness, and what it means to be truly free.
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