Amanda Knox has revealed she felt “completely exploited” by a real crime and says her three-year-old daughter started asking questions about Meredith Kercher’s murder.
The mother of two, 37, spoke to journalist Billy Binion about her views on true crime. Reasonafter her story became one of the world’s biggest cases in 2007, when she was accused of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, while she was studying in Italy.
Despite DNA mishandling, a forced confession, and a lack of credible evidence, Amanda was convicted and spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before being exonerated in 2015.
Amanda, who is now an activist, writer and journalist, revealed that her three-year-old daughter, Eureka, who she shares with her husband Christopher Robinson, has started asking questions about her case.
She said: ‘My daughter is three now and she’s getting to the point where she asks questions, because you know my past is not something hidden, and from time to time it comes to light.
“She likes when I tell her a story, so she tells me a story about Bluey, a story about the Little Mermaid, sometimes she asks me to Tell the story of Mom going to Italy.
“I just have to say ‘well, mom went to Italy and something really, really bad happened, someone hurt her friend and then mom got hurt too,’ and my daughter says ‘why’ and I say, ‘I don’t know.'” .
Following a 2011 US television film, her 2013 memoir Waiting to be Heard, and a 2016 Netflix documentary, Amanda is now co-producing an eight-part series for Hulu about her path to freedom.
Amanda Knox revealed she felt “completely exploited” by a real crime and says her three-year-old daughter started asking questions about her case while speaking to Reason journalist Billy Binion.
However, Amanda revealed that she has she felt “completely exploited” by the real Victims of crime often have no say in how their stories are told.
She explained: ‘I was not a real criminal person before I became the subject of a real criminal phenomenon.
“What I see today and it concerns me is that the worst experiences of people’s lives are not just of public interest or talked about for reasons of journalistic integrity, it is entertainment and, very often, the people who have the most in game If and how those stories are told, they have absolutely nothing to say about it.
“In true crime history, even the idea that someone at the center of a horrible story might have anything objective or valuable to contribute was looked down upon.
“I’ve rebelled against the idea that someone like me has nothing valuable to say or offer when it comes to how my own story is told.”
Amanda, who hosts a podcast called Labyrinths, said it is “obviously exploitative” for people to tell their story without consulting it.
She said: “I think one of the really dangerous positions that people like me are put in is when content creators come to us and say we’re going to make a podcast, a documentary or a film based on their story, we”. We’ll do it whether you’re involved or not, so you might as well do it.
She added that she only agreed to do a Netflix documentary examining her case because the directors informed her before production that the show would only be made if she spoke to them.
Amanda, who is now an activist, writer and journalist, revealed that her three-year-old daughter, Eureka, who she shares with her husband Christopher Robinson, has started asking questions about her case.
Amanda arrives at Perugia court, accused of the alleged sexual murder of her British housemate in the Italian university town of Perugia.
Amanda is escorted by Italian prison police officers to the court in Perugia, Italy, in 2008.
Meredith was found dead on the floor of her bedroom in 2007.
Speaking about co-producing Hulu’s new drama about the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, he said: “I find myself in the extremely privileged and rare position of being a voice and I’m taking it very seriously.” “I’m very proud of the work we’re doing.”
The American author, who will publish a book in March called Free, also spoke about the psychological impact of being imprisoned for something she did not do.
She said: “It’s terribly tragic, inhuman and absolutely banal. A single day will last forever, but suddenly you’ll blink and months of your life will be gone and you’ll be like ‘when did that happen?'” So the experience of prison time It’s very strange and it’s one of the hardest things to come back into the world with.’
“I would say that the indignities that so many people face in prison, both guilty and innocent, are not doing any of us any good.”
Amanda, her daughter Eureka and her husband Christopher Robinson on a hike together in 2022
More than a decade after the fateful day Amanda was undeservedly convicted of murder
Amanda, then 20 years old, and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were the first to be charged with the crime and she was sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Amanda (seen in 2011) came to light in 2007 after her roommate Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered.
A thief named Rudy Guede was later convicted of killing Meredith after his fingerprints were found on her belongings and Amanda and Raffaele’s convictions were overturned.
Elsewhere, Amanda said people have “projected Meredith’s tragedy” onto her because she’s the one who survived.
He stated that people forget that they were both victims of crime and believe that somehow their ‘pain is less’ because Meredith’s life was taken.
She said: ‘I was an indirect victim of crime before I was a victim of the criminal justice system, my roommate was raped and murdered by a person who broke into our house, that’s horrible.
‘I have my life, she doesn’t, but does that mean my life is somehow less valuable or that my pain is less because her life was taken? No.
‘What happened to her should never have happened and what happened to me should never have happened. I want to say that my life is not hostage to Meredith’s tragedy.
“People are projecting Meredith’s tragedy onto me because I’m the one who lived and lived and was able to come home, but part of me understands it, because in some ways I’ve felt it myself.”
“I felt like Meredith and I came to Perugia to do the exact same thing and live in the exact same house and we’re two sides of the same coin and fate flipped that coin and it landed the way it landed, and so a part of me feels that I carry his ghost inside me.
“I would really love to visit his grave, but I don’t feel comfortable doing so until his family is comfortable with me.”
Meredith’s real killer was eventually identified as Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, after his DNA was found on her body.
He was sentenced to 16 years before being released in 2021, as he only needed to serve 13 years for “good behavior.”
Amanda is now 37 years old and has two children. He dedicates his time to advocating for criminal justice reform and campaigning against wrongful convictions.
The new series is co-produced by Monica Lewinsky, famous for her romance with then-US President Bill Clinton, a story that Disney also decided to turn into a television drama.
Series bosses say it tells the “true story of how Amanda Knox was wrongly convicted of the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher and her 16-year odyssey to free herself.”