Before she participated in a student exchange program that took her to Italy and led to her conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher, an American exchange student studying linguistics from the UK, Amanda Marie Knox was an average American girl. When the prosecution and media painted her as a “She-Devil,” the news gained notoriety. She was found guilty of the murder, along with her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and a small-time burglar named Rudy Guede. She was first given a sentence of 26 years in prison, of which she served more than four years in an Italian jail before an appeal to a higher court resulted in her being freed. She left Italy to finish her studies but the Italian legal system ordered a retrial, where she was once more found guilty of the crime. The Italian Supreme Court, which concluded that she was not guilty of the murder, finally put an end to the case. After her initial acquittal, she never went back to Italy, but her family was forced to pay for the numerous trials, which left them insolvent. The best-selling memoir “Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir” she wrote about her experiences served as the basis for several other books, documentaries, and an American true-crime movie called “Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy.” She recently stated that she wanted to return to Italy to finish her narrative.
Early Childhood & Life
Edda Mellas and Curt Knox welcomed Amanda Marie Knox into the world on July 9, 1987, in Seattle, Washington, the United States. Her father was the vice president of a nearby Macy’s shop, while her mother taught arithmetic. When she was relatively young, her parents got divorced, and her mother later wed Chris Mellas, an IT specialist. She has two stepsisters in addition to one younger sister.
She earned her diploma from the Seattle Preparatory School in 2005 and continued to the University of Washington to study linguistics. She was a pleasant and intelligent student who earned a spot on the university’s dean’s list for her accomplishments. She excelled at athletics and soccer, earning the moniker “Foxy Knoxy.”
When she was 15 years old, she traveled to Italy for the first time with her family and explored Rome, Pisa, Pompeii’s ruins, and the Amalfi Coast. After reading the novel “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes, she became fascinated with the nation and worked part-time to pay for an academic year in Italy to study linguistics. Her stepfather had always been wary of her plans to study abroad in Italy since he believed she was still too young to travel on her own.
When Knox and fellow exchange student Meredith Kercher from the UK rented a four-bedroom flat with two other Italian women in Perugia, Italy, in September 2007, they got to know one another for the first time. To make ends meet, Knox took a part-time job at a pub.
As pals, Knox and Kercher began to hang out with the boys who resided in their apartment’s basement. While Knox started seeing Raffaele Sollecito, a nearby student studying computer engineering, Kercher started dating a boy named Giacomo.
Acquittal & Wrongful Conviction
Knox called Kercher on November 2, 2007, and when she did not hear back from them, she became concerned. She worried that Kercher had been injured, so she called her Italian roommates and let them know. After that, Sollecito, who had called the police, followed her to her apartment. Kercher was discovered dead on the floor with many stab wounds when the cops forced open the door to her room.
The initial investigation revealed no evidence of a forced entry into the room, indicating that the murder was committed by a known individual. Knox insisted that she had a night off from working at a bar and had spent the murderous night with her boyfriend, Sollecito. She accused Lumumba, the proprietor of her bar, who had an alibi because he was serving clients at the bar, in response to pressure from the police.
Investigations turned out the bloodstained prints of Rudy Guede, a minor offender who frequented the flat’s basement with the lads. He had escaped to Germany, where he was extradited and accused of the crime.
Guede, who was on trial, accused Knox and Sollecito of killing Kercher while maintaining his innocence. A fast-track court found him guilty of murder after finding that he and an accomplice were the ones who carried out the real killing. He received a 30-year prison term.
During their 2009 trial, Knox and Sollecito entered a not-guilty plea to the accusations of sexual assault, murder, and theft made against them. However, the judge judged them guilty and gave Knox a 26-year prison term while giving Sollecito a 25-year sentence. The US government and non-governmental organizations criticized the verdict, claiming that innocent persons had been wrongfully convicted for the crime that Guede appeared to have committed. The Italian justice system received harsh criticism for treating Amanda unfairly since she was an American.
A court that heard Knox and Sollecito’s appeal in November 2010 found them not guilty because Kercher’s DNA could not be found on the claimed murder weapon discovered in Sollecito’s kitchen. Both were exonerated and given a clean bill of health because of more anomalies in the case. Knox was given a three-year prison sentence after being found guilty of fraudulently accusing her employer; however, she had already served that time. After the decision, Knox took a flight back to Seattle, Washington, to finish her coursework.
The case was brought to light once more in March 2013, when the Supreme Court of Cassation overturned the lower court’s decision to exonerate the defendant and mandated a new trial. In September 2013, a new trial took place, and Knox and Sollecito were once more held responsible for the murder. Despite not being present for the court, Knox received a 28 1/2-year prison term.
The Supreme Court’s decision to acquit Knox and Sollecito of the murder on September 7, 2015, effectively put an end to the case.
Personal Legacy & Life
Knox was imprisoned in Italy for nearly four years for a crime she did not commit. The paparazzi followed her, and her family was forced to pay for her trial, which caused them to go bankrupt.
Writing a book about her trial called “Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir” and returning to the United States to finish her creative writing degree helped her family pay their bills.
She then worked as a journalist for the “West Seattle Herald” and took up the cause of those who had been falsely charged as an activist. She has given multiple speeches regarding her overall experience with the judicial and law enforcement systems in Italy.
She has said she might go back to Perugia to finish the sequel to her best-selling biography.
In 2015, she became engaged to Colin Sutherland, the love of her life, but they later broke it up. At the moment, Christopher Robinson is thought to be her boyfriend.
Amanda Knox’s Net Worth
Amanda Knox is an American author with a fortune of $500,000. Amanda is best known for having been wrongly accused and ultimately found not guilty of killing Meredith Kercher in 2007.
Trivia
The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox by Burleigh & Nina and Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox by Sollecito, Raffaele & Gumbel, Andrew are two books and documentaries that focus on Amanda.
Additionally, her case was depicted in the Netflix documentary “Amanda Knox” and the American real crime film “Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy.”