Inside Amanda Knox’s Unlikely Friendship With the Prosecutor Who Accused Her of Being a ‘Sexual Deviant’ During Meredith Kercher’s Murder Trial
All eyes are back onto Amanda Knox after a new drama series based on Meredith Kercher’s murder case. Hulu‘s The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox focuses on the 15 years of the author’s life—from when she was accused of murdering her roommate to returning to the crime scene in 2022.
Amanda Knox was studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, and was living with Kercher. in a shared space with two other roomates. Kercher was murdered on Nov. 1, 2007, in their house. Knox claimed she was with her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito. However, both were found guilty of murder in 2009, but both were exonerated by the Italian Supreme Court in 2015. She served four years in prison before being released in 2011.
In the years following the case, Amanda Knox has recounted her times going back to the country where her infamous case was held.
Why did Amanda Knox go back to Italy?
Amanda Knox admitted she regularly goes back to Italy as she feels pretty connected to the Mediterranean country.
In a conversation with NPR’s Fresh Air, Knox says she feels rooted as an Italian American and wants to make the best out of her travels. “One of the things that my husband and I [said] on one of our trips back to Italy was, ‘make good memories.’
The author also talked about the clear experiences she has when going back to the house where she lived in. “And even when I revisited my house in Perugia, where this whole crime happened, I had this shocking realization that it was just a place. Like there was somebody else living in it as if nothing bad had ever happened. It wasn’t like this set-in-amber place of tragedy. It was a place. This was a place where someone had lost their life and also someone had made love and other people had lived their lives and like it was just a place. And every place is the place of someone’s worst tragedy and someone’s best moments.
In 2022, she reunited with her ex-boyfriend in the country on the anniversary of Kercher’s murder. “It was bittersweet to go back as we were supposed to go there in such different circumstances, but it was just nice for us to be able to talk about something that wasn’t the case,” Sollecito told The Mirror at the time.
The following year, she cleared the air with the lead prosecutor in the case, Dr. Giuliano Mignini. During the case, Mignini had painted Knox as a sexual deviant and a cold-blooded murderer. They have since developed an unlikely friendship despite looking at him as a “boogeyman figure” in her life.
“I think that’s an important point to make as I’m not a person whose faith, for example, compels them to forgive,” she told People. “That was not my goal. My goal was to understand him… there was this deep curiosity in me to try to understand this person who decided that I was a dangerous person, who deserved to spend the most years of my life in prison.”
“He was a real person,” she continued. “He wasn’t this dark, dark, mythical figure. He was a real human being who had real feelings and real thoughts, not a boogeyman. And as soon as I saw that, I could empathize with him. And as soon as you empathize with someone, you have compassion for them.”
When the drama series premiered, Knox told NPR that she’s still in frequent contact with Mignini. “Me and my prosecutor are still in contact today,” she said. “I’ve been receiving text messages from him this morning.”
