AMANDA KNOX, PROBABLY one of the most famous murder exonerees on the planet, appeared on the Ray D’Arcy Show on RTÉ last night and gave what was by turns an emotive, disturbing, and at times downright odd interview.
Knox, now 30, was convicted of the murder of her English flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, while a student in 2007.
She spent four years in prison before being acquitted in 2011. A retrial in 2014 saw her found guilty once more, only to be definitively confirmed to be innocent the following year. The only person currently in prison for the crime is then 21-year-old petty criminal Rudy Guede, who was eventually convicted of Kercher’s rape and murder.
Nowadays, Knox spends her time writing and campaigning as part of innocence projects devoted to exonerating the wrongfully convicted.
Last night’s half-hour long interview covered a lot of ground – from her life before travelling to Italy, to the case itself, to her struggle to prove her innocence.
Her demeanour varied from composed, to happy, to tearful as she described the events which lead to her incarceration, along with then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, for Kercher’s murder.
She described how news footage of her kissing Sollecito outside the apartment where Kercher’s body had been found ended up coming back to haunt her:
“It’s become the most-replayed three seconds of my entire life,” she said. “We were out there for an hour or two. He was holding me and gave me a few kisses. At that moment I was shocked and confused and he was doing his best to comfort me. Most of the time he just held me and gave me his jacket to keep me warm.”
I can see why it would seem odd if it was being re-run the way it was. It was very misrepresented.
Knox said that 53 hours of interrogation by the Italian police were what led to her alleging that her then boss, restaurant owner Patrick Lumumba, was the killer. Lumumba was subsequently arrested, although it quickly emerged he could not possibly have committed the crime.
“I broke,” Knox said, struggling to maintain her composure, last night. “They convinced me that I had witnessed the murder and that Patrick had something to do with it. And I said OK. And there was no evidence against him. They just wanted to put someone inside, they wanted to solve this crime.”
They scared the bejesus out of a 20-year-old girl who spoke their language like a 10-year-old. I felt guilty for years for how they manipulated me. I learned I’m not the only one this has happened to, this is a real problem in police interrogations, they don’t have to just hit you to get you to break.
Vilification
Knox talked about how the infamous media label of ‘Foxy Knoxy’ had originated from a nickname she had as a junior basketball player in her native Washington State.
“Why do they do that to every single woman ever that they want to vilify? I’ve come to realise that a really good way to vilify women is by attacking their sexuality. As soon as they’re a slut they’re guilty of anything,” she said.
Perhaps the most bizarre section of the interview saw Knox recount the support she had received from Ireland throughout her courtroom battles:
“I got letters from lots of Irish people who said ‘of course they’re taking advantage of a vulnerable person and spinning it in a bad way, of course, we know about that’,” she said.
They even sent me rebel songs and everything, they sent me a cd of the 50 most popular ones.
Knox then, in something of an upbeat break from her earlier tearfulness, broke into a couple of bars of Come Out Ye Black and Tans:
“Come out ye Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man.”
I didn’t know what any of that meant. I just understood the fighting spirit of it and I appreciated that.
She also acknowledged, that when it comes to her innocence or otherwise, in the public’s view there is no middle ground.
“With people who confront me, there are those who really latch onto the conspiracy theory that I orchestrated a sex game in order to punish Meredith for her purity. That there would never be any reason for me to give conflicting statements to police other than that I’m a lying, murderous… bad word.”
People are only brave enough to (confront me) behind an online screen really.
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