October 8, 2025 • 54 mins
You may know the story of Amanda Knox, but you won’t believe what really happened to her in Italy. Amanda is hanging out with Jana and sharing the truth, from her arrest and interrogation to her time in prison.
Amanda explains how her case was different than most wrongful convictions, and we understand why she was left in prison after the person who actually committed the crime was found.
Plus, Amanda tells Jana how she really feels about the popularity of “true crime”!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Wind Down with Jane Kramer and I'm Heart Radio Podcast. Amanda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thank you so much for coming on today. I'm Jana,
This is Kristen, and I've been just deep diving into
the Hulu series. I say, you know, I knew about
your case, but to watch it, it's like, Okay, I'm
gonna be really honest, right, I knew about the case,
but I didn't know about the case.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So it's like, I knew what they portrayed you as,
but I didn't really ever do the research to kind
of understand all the layers with it.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Right, And why would you write like we all have
lives and you know, I in your place would also
not have spent the time and energy to deep dive
down the internet rabbit hole and try to make sense
of all of the information and misinformation that's out there. Yeah,
I completely understand, and I think that that is one
(01:00):
of the things that really motivated the people that I
worked with on this show was as soon as they
started deep diving into it, they were like, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, well, and I think that's what's so crazy and
why I'm just so excited for the next episode to
come out. But you know, because would you how would
you say the media in the US portrayed you?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, you know, I would say that on the whole,
the US media tended to take the stance of, wait
a second, is this one of our own? Actually, this
psychopathic murderer that we keep hearing about? Like there, I
think there was a sense from the US there was
(01:45):
a sense of skepticism that was not readily available in
Europe at the time. That said, there were plenty, plenty
of journalists who were working for American outlets who you know,
wrote not just terrible articles, but whole books about like
how I'm a psychopathic murderer. So it's I can't say
(02:06):
that like the US media was itself one unified front,
but it was some of the first instances of skepticism
that were really vocal were coming from the US, not exclusively,
you know. Again, also in Italy there were like two
voices out there, and like the number, like the huge
(02:28):
quantity of people who were writing and investigating I say
that with air quotes the case, right, yeah, there, So
those voices were that were questioning the narrative that was
immediately presented upon my arrest basically and for like months afterward,
(02:50):
there really was just this one narrative about, you know,
a sex game gone wrong, a girl on girl sex violence.
That was something that was out there in the media,
really unquestioned for months and months and months, and as
the investigation played out, and it wasn't really until the
trials got started and the prosecution was forced to present
(03:15):
the evidence in a public forum, like the actual evidence
that they had instead of the rumors of what evidence
they had that people started to say, wait a second,
we were promised a smoking gun, we were promised a motive.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Where is all of that?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, and I think too, like from what I remember,
it was like the party, the US party girl, you know,
and that's that's kind of all I really took in, honestly.
And then and then from watching all this, I mean,
I'm just a first and foremost, I'm so sorry that
you had to go through that and to this day
(03:48):
still have I mean, to have books about someone portraying
you as this sociopath murderer. I mean, what basis do
they have to even say that when there is when
actually somebody got accused of the murder, right.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, I think that's what's so interesting about this case
in terms of how it compares to other wrongful convictions
that I don't know. Do you guys, Do you guys
dig into wrongful conviction cases all that much?
Speaker 5 (04:14):
I'm ish Well, ironically, I just spent last week with
Anthony ray Hinton.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Oh yeah, so I don't. I don't know if there's
like a theme in my life right now, but.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
Just even hearing his story was, you know, absolutely crazy,
and just who you both are on the other side
of this is absolutely, like wildly inspiring to me.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But just I'm in awe of both of.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
You, Oh wow, because it's very easy to be angry,
and it's very easy to come out of this with
a chip on your shoulder, to say the least, and
you both have that in common, which I think is
like this beautiful redemption in so many ways.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I did want to ask too.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
You know, It's like, we talk so much about you
being wrongly used, and we should obviously, but you also
had someone that you know get murdered. Yeah, And I
think we kind of like scoop past that often. And
I just can't imagine you as a young girl being
in a country that is not your home and losing
someone that was close enough to you in a really
(05:20):
violent way. Tell us what that does to young Amanda
and now Amanda.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And then on top of that too, not to pile
that on from the portrayal in the Hulu, not having
that emotional thing being kind of a red flag to
those detectives, like were you just kind of numb to it?
Is that why the emotion wasn't there? Or yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's a lot to that. Yeah, yeah, So there, you're right,
(05:49):
and thank you for taking note of that. That had
none of the horribly traumatic things that resulted from my
arrest taken place, right, had I never been suspected and
arrested and put through years and years of trials and
you know, global vilification, there would still be the trauma
of coming home and discovering a crime scene and over
(06:13):
the course of a few days realizing what had taken place,
which is that, you know, this this young woman who
was very much like my age, my you know, was
the other girl studying abroad who lived in a house
with me, like basically like the English equivalent of me
in the household, was just raped and murdered in her
(06:36):
own bedroom after coming home from you know, spending the
evening with her friends. Like that in itself would have
been a life altering traumatic experience for me in my life,
the one because of this weird sense of like, oh
my god, I I I like someone close to me
(07:01):
is now just gone, just disappeared, like and in a
horrific way. And I definitely had like really big emotional
mood swings about that in those early days. I think
that a lot of people really fixate on those moments
where I'm sort of just shell shocked, like there's a lot,
(07:22):
you know, there's this imagery of me outside of my house,
you know, trying to sort of take this all in.
And my first sort of reaction is almost like dead possum,
Like I'm just sort of like, oh my god, uh,
what's going on? And of course part of that is
that I'm not understanding everything that everyone is saying. Everyone's
(07:43):
yelling and Italian, and I'm not fluent in Italian, so
I'm trying to piece together what's going on. And also
I'm sort of in shock at you know, understanding that
something horrible is going on. So there's that shell shock reaction,
But then I also had other reactions like that. Again,
depending on how you what your sort of what your
(08:07):
baseline assumptions are can be interpreted in many different ways.
And that's one of the things that we try to
show in the in the Hulu series is that the
same like people can look at the same set of facts,
but depending upon their unconscious biases and their base assumptions,
they're going to interpret those same set of facts in
(08:30):
very very different ways.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And one of.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Those was this you know well reported moment when the
police took me back to my house, you know, a
few days after it had been closed off as a
crime scene, and like basically this was the first time
I'm entering into my house with the knowledge of what
had taken place there. Right Like in that moment when
(08:55):
I came home and discovered a crime scene, I didn't
discover the murder. I discovered a break in. I never
actually saw into my roommate's room, so I never saw
her body. I never saw, like, you know, the horrible,
bloody crime scene that was not like imprinted in me.
And it wasn't really until I was in the police
station and answering their questions and asking them questions like
(09:18):
what happened? What was actually what's going on that they
told me that my roommate had been stabbed to death,
and so I'm like reeling from this. They've take me
back to my house where now I have this information
in my head, and they asked me to go and
like sift through the knife drawer in our kitchen to
(09:40):
see if there are any knives missing, which immediately to
me sounds like they're asking me to see if there's
like I'm looking for basically if there's a murder weapon.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, they asked in the show, They're like, is there
a missing knife?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
And You're like, is there a missing knife? And I'm
like okay. So I'm searching through these not like this
knife drawer and I'm touching these knives, these like sharp objects.
And now with this like whole new context of something
like this was used to hurt and murder.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
My friend, like, I freak I freak out.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I have a full blown like I'm sobbing, I'm hyperventilating,
I'm freaking out because like the reality of this like
devastating thing is really hitting me in this really visceral way.
And so that's my experience of that moment. But the
police who are looking on who are already assuming that
(10:39):
I'm not telling the full truth that I'm somehow involved.
They look at that moment and say, this is her confessing,
This is a confession, This is her like her body
is giving away her sense of guilt. And of course
that's their interpretation of that moment. But like that for me,
(11:00):
was me having a very emotional moment about what happened
to my roommate. That just happened to transpire in a
moment where the cameras weren't rolling outside of you know,
like they would have seen me crying hysterically if they
had seen me in that moment, but they didn't. And
so there's this interesting, you know, cherry picking of moments
(11:23):
in that immediate wake of discovering the crime scene. In
those days when I'm being questioned by police, there's this
cherry picking to say, oh, Amanda was not emotional, therefore
she was guilty. But then Amanda was emotional, therefore she
was guilty. And there's always through that lens of sort
of assuming my guilt because you know, like they did,
(11:48):
they assumed that I was involved somehow, that I knew
something from the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
You also are really young.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I mean, we keep acting like this is like a listen,
I know, forty three year old me and twenty something
me are like wildly different people who have had crazy
different experiences and can process information differently slower, like you're
a kid at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Still, yeah, And I think notably, I was a kid
who had never had anything bad happen in my life.
Like I was raised by a loving family, where like
we didn't have conflict in my life. I didn't have
dramatic things in my life, and I certainly didn't have
any interactions with the police before I had military in
(12:36):
my family. So I was raised to sort of be
respectful and deferential to authority.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
But like I didn't have any.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Context for how to respond to this situation. And of
course I'm also how many frickin' miles away from home
and everyone I know, and I haven't actually been in
Italy all that long, and so I don't really have
a stable sense of like community or like people to
lean on. And so I was just likemediately thrown into
(13:10):
a situation where I was utterly underresourced and unprepared, and
I was a deer in headlights.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I really didn't know what.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
To do except to do as I was told.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
In the Hulu show, there was two things that I
just had certain questions on one was when the detectives
were saying that your boyfriend at the time he wasn't
confirming your alibi that you were with him. M hmm, yeah,
which I didn't understand, and why to that. And then
also what I guess I'm still trying to understand what
(13:57):
confession is because when that went on the news, thing
she confessed and I'm like, what piece were they saying
was a confession?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
M great.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
So one thing that you should know, which is really
important both in Italy but also here in the United States,
is that police can lie to you, and they can
and will lie to you if they think that lying
to you is going to manipulate you into giving them
(14:29):
the information that they think you are withholding from them.
And so during my interrogation, which by the way, they
this is something that people do here in the US
as well, there's this difference and this is again really
important to know that of course none of us really know,
but there's a very distinct difference between an interview and
(14:52):
an interrogation. Are you guys aware of this difference?
Speaker 5 (14:56):
I don't, actually, I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean but no, right,
I would assume, but no, yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Yeah, right, So.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
The things we don't know and the things that they
sort of like rely on you not knowing. So the
difference between an interview and an interrogation is that an
interrogation means that you are in custody. Really you don't
really have the right to leave, and therefore you have
human rights that get triggered. Right. You are entitled to
(15:25):
an attorney. You are entitled to remain silent if you
don't speak the language. You are entitled to an interpreter.
These are all rights that we all have that law
enforcement is supposed to respect. If you are being interrogated,
if you are not being interrogated, if you are being interviewed,
technically none of those rights apply. But the problem is
(15:50):
how do you tell the difference between whether or not
you are being interrogated and whether or not you were
being interviewed, because it's not clear. It's happening all in
the same room with all of the same people, and
oftentimes interviews morph into interrogations depending on what you happen
to say during your interview, and it all depends upon
(16:12):
the police and what they believe, whether or not they
believe you are telling the truth. So as an innocent
person who is in that scenario. You have no idea
that the police are suddenly going to shift gears and
assume that you are lying to them, and now they
(16:32):
are going to start interrogating you with the presumption of
your guilt or that you are lying, and therefore they
are going to start using really, really coercive and manipulative tactics.
In either case interview or interrogation, police can lie to you.
And so over the course of my what the police
claim was merely an interview, they say I was never interrogated.
(16:55):
I was merely interviewed. They told me a number of
lies that I was present at the crime scene when
the crime occurred, and they knew that from physical proof
evidence that they found at the crime scene. And they
told me that Rafaela said that I was not with
him at his house. Now it is true that at
(17:20):
the same time that I was being interrogated, Raphael my boyfriend,
was also being interrogated. He was in another room being interrogated,
and at a certain point in his interrogation he was
similarly coerced into making false statements. So they told him
that I was not with him the night of the murder.
(17:41):
That they know that he's lying for me and that
he needs to stop lying or else he's going to
end up in prison. And so at a certain point
he flips. But like in the course of the timeline,
I don't know, Like to this day, I don't know
when he flipped. Did he flip before they broke, Like,
did he break before they broke me? Did they just
(18:04):
come into the room and lie to me and tell
me that he had changed his like changed his story
just to make me break, Like, I don't know, because
the police are allowed to lie to me.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
So either way, like there there.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
It is true that during his interrogation, he also was
coerced into signing a false statement, saying, maybe Amanda left
after I fell asleep, and she came back afterwards and
then told me that I had to lie for her,
like maybe that happened, and then he signs that, and
then I, you know, right, well, I don't have any
(18:40):
memory of this, but maybe I was there and maybe
it was you know, my boss Patrick, because he said
sent me a text message like that's my statement, and
then you know a few hours later, I retract it,
but by then it's too late. So that does that
answer your question about like the whole interrogation and the
statements and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
At what point were you like, oh, like, there, this is,
this is not going you know, because you know you're innocent,
so you know, you know, you're there for so many
days and hours and it's and then you're in the
prison and you're like no, no, like I'm but I'm
not a murderer, and I'm just it's like, at what
(19:20):
point were you just like this is I'm fucked.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
I mean, I wouldn't say there's a single moment because
of the immensity of the situation and like the sort.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Of trauma upon trauma upon trauma.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Of it all.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Like there were moments of realization over time, Like even
you know, I remember there were even moments during my
interrogation where I was like, oh my god, oh my god,
what's happening.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Oh my god, I'm I'm fucked.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Like there's you know, when the police started to convince me.
So what they did to convince me of this alternate
reality is they told me that I had witnessed something
so traumatic that my brain had blacked it out. And
so even though I had no memory of witnessing anyone murder, Meredith.
(20:15):
Of course I didn't have a memory of it because
it was repressed, and so I'm like going, well, I,
first of all, I don't know that the police would
ever lie to me and could lie to me, So
I'm assuming that everything that they're telling me is true.
They're crafting this like false reality around me, and I'm
trying to make sense of it. And already I'm like
this in a kind of alternate reality because I never
(20:39):
expected to come home and discover my roommate murdered, so like,
already I'm sort of in a state of like destabilization.
And then the police start putting this pressure on me
and start suggesting this alternate reality to me that I
have witnessed something terrible and I'm so traumatized by it
that I can't even remember it. So like when that's
(21:00):
guarded to like implant itself in my mind, that was
a huge moment of freaking out because I didn't know
what was true or what was not true anymore. Like
I had memories of what I was doing that night.
I was with my boyfriend, we were watching a movie,
we made dinner, like all of these very real memories,
and they're telling me that they're not real, and that
(21:21):
the real memories have been repressed and replaced by fantasy.
And so I'm just like trying to make sense of
this and feeling absolutely crazy, and I like, I completely
break down. I'm hysterical, I'm sobbing, and I don't know,
and I just put my faith in the police that
they must know, and I sort of just say, Okay, fine,
(21:45):
I guess I guess you must be right, and I sign,
you know, sign away my freedom that way, like that's
that's how it happened in that moment. But then, of
course I'm the pressure cooker of that entire progation disappears
and I have a moment to sleep and I wake
up and I realize, oh no, this, you know, I've
(22:07):
I really don't have memories of this, and I really
do remember being at my boyfriend's house. This is all
a big mistake. I write a retraction. I think this
is all just a big misunderstanding. The police take me
to prison, but they don't tell me they're taking me
to prison. They say that they're taking me to a
holding place for my own protection. So again like they're
lying to me and giving me this false sense of security.
(22:30):
They take me to prison. They say it's only going
to be a for a few days. I'll get to
see my mom, And of course it's not a few days.
I spend one thousand, four hundred and twenty eight days there,
and if it were up to the prosecution, I never
would have left. But like even then, like even after I,
you know, sit in front of a judge and I
hear them actually accuse me of participating in the murder
(22:54):
of my roommate.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
Like.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
The stages of grief kick in, where you think this
cannot be real, like this cannot be real, like how
can this possibly be happening? And I get into this
state of like this this is just a big misunderstanding,
and when the police do the actual investigation, they'll find
out who really committed the crime, and then they'll realize
they were wrong and they'll feel really bad and it'll
(23:21):
be all okay. And of course that doesn't happen, and
then I think, oh, well, you know, as soon as
the trial plays out and a judge and a jury
here that there's like literally no evidence that I had
anything to do with this, they'll figure it out and
I'll get to go home. And then that doesn't happen,
and so like there were moments throughout this entire journey
where I thought the right thing was going to happen,
(23:45):
and I kept getting barred, doors slammed in my face,
and I had to grapple with a new existential crisis
after another. And and you know, part of that you
mentioned like being interested in the next episode of the
(24:08):
show that's going to come out, Like part of that
trauma and that existential crisis is even after you know,
I'm acquitted and vindicated and freed, it doesn't mean that
I get to go back to the life that I
had before I was accused of this crime. Like I'm
forever branded with the accusation of murder, the accusation that
(24:33):
I did something horrible to my friend, and that never
goes away, And like there's an existential crisis there where it's.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Like, oh my god, I'm fucked.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Like there's nothing I could possibly do in my life
that could ever define me more than this horrific thing
that I was accused of that I didn't do.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
And that's a whole whole.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
New level of being fuked that like I've had to
grapple with over the years.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Man.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Sorry, I just while you were there and then being
and then them actually finding the true killer, them still
doing your trial thinking that you guys, I guess, were accomplices.
Is that you know kind of what I was understanding
now knowing that he's out after you know, his thirteen
(25:41):
year sentence. How I mean, if you had any words
to him, I mean, because he's still he's still pleading,
he's not guilty, which is just even though he's up
for a charge right now for his ex girlfriend for
stalking and you know, just not being a good human.
So it's like, have you ever had a face to
(26:02):
face with him? If you haven't, is there anything you
would say to him, because it's like he gets to
just kind of have this quick trial not really in
the media. Didn't even I didn't even know, That's the thing.
I didn't even know they caught the killer until I'm
watching your show that you produced, agreed, So that that's
where I'm like, wait, then why did she go to jail?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I don't know what?
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
More about him?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And then he gets out? Are you kidding me? She
would still be in there, you know, and we don
still hear more about you than we did about him,
talk about wrongfully convicted and then wrongfully the whole thing,
you know, with the with the with the court system,
you still have to become Amanda a person, Amanda a wife,
Amanda a mom, like with all of these things.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
So yeah, so something that makes this case true unique,
I would say among wrongful conviction cases is very often
and wrongful can cases when they got the wrong person
it's because they didn't find the right person right, Like,
they didn't, you know, investigate the DNA evidence they went
(27:10):
off of like some mistaken eyewitness testimony. The wrong person
goes to jail, but everyone thinks, we're good, we got
the guy. And it's only until like twenty years later
that they test the DNA and it proves that it
was someone else, and then everyone goes, oh, we were wrong, oops,
and they let the guy out. In this case, like
(27:32):
within weeks, the police knew who committed this crime for real.
But by then they had already arrested me, my boyfriend,
and my boss and announced case closed to the entire world.
And so they had already taken a stand about what
(27:56):
they what they believed to be true about what happened
to Meredith. That she was murdered in a in a
murder orgy, and that was orchestrated by me, that they
had already like put a stake in the ground as
their claim to what happened. And then the forensic evidence
(28:18):
comes back and shows that there's no evidence of me, Raphael,
my boyfriend, or my boss Patrick Lumumba at the crime scene.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And they go, oh, who is this evidence of?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
And it is evidence of a known local burglar who
has a history of breaking and entering, is known to
be aggressive towards women, has been caught once like five
days earlier, having broken into another facility and was carrying
a knife and stolen goods with him.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Like all of that.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Becomes reality, and the prosecution is faced with a choice.
Their choice is to go back on everything they've done
up to this point and say we were wrong. Here's
the actual person who committed this crime, or they have
to say we were only slightly wrong. Patrick is innocent,
(29:20):
but Rudy is the one who's actually Rudy's the black guy.
There's a black guy involved. It wasn't Patrick, it's Rudy.
And this whole scenario that we've concocted, which is the
murder orgy orchestrated by Amanda. That still is true, and
that's that's what they decided to do, is they decided
to say, we were only wrong about one thing, and
(29:42):
that was we got the wrong black guy, and everything
else that we have announced to the world remains true.
And you know, it's it's not just ego, right like,
I don't some people argue that it at that point,
that was when you know, the prosecution and the police
(30:04):
revealed themselves to be utterly corrupt, right like, they made
a very selfish decision to save their own face, their
own asses, instead of acknowledge that they, you know, had
traumatized innocent people. But they didn't do that, And I
don't think that they did it just out of a
sense of ego, although I don't put it past people's ego.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
To be involved in that.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
I think that the police were and the prosecutor, who
is the one who leads the investigation in Italy, they're
very much, you know, working together. It's a little bit
different than here in the United States. They were really
compelled by a number of things that they had assumed
(30:51):
about the crime scene from the very beginning, which was
that one, there was no break in the police and
the prosecutor believed from day one that the break in
that I had called the police to report was actually faked,
faked by me in order to divert attention away from
(31:15):
the fact that I, a person who lived in the
house was involved in the crime.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
That's what they believed.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
So already, like they have this one hundred percent belief
that even though there's a guy who has a history
of breaking and entering is involved in the crime, this
is not a case of a break like a break in.
This is a case of someone in the house orchestrated
this crime and attempted to cover it up. Why they
believe that, that's a great question. My prosecutor was has
(31:46):
a history of investigating cases that he believes were cover ups.
So he tends, you know, he's he's investigated mafia, he's
investigated the freemasons. You know, these like social clubs that
he says, are you know, political covers for corruption.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
He has this like.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Big, long time history of looking into cases with the
assumption that there is more than what appears to the
naked eye. And so I believe that he has this
unconscious bias even walking into what is very apparently a
open and shutcase of breaking enter, rape, and murder, like
(32:30):
he is already primed to believe that things aren't as
what they appear. And then, of course they have the
statements that they coerced me into signing in their interrogation,
which they believe prove that I was physically present when
the crime occurred, because in their minds, no innocent person
(32:51):
could be compelled to place themselves at the crime scene
if they weren't actually at the crime scene when it happened.
So they they also have an unconscious bias about that,
and so in their mind, these are compelling pieces of
evidence to suggest that even though they were wrong about
who exactly was involved, they were right to assume that
(33:14):
I was involved and that I was covering it up,
and that I was the orchestrator of this entire horrific event.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
And meanwhile, this man just gets out.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yes, yes, And you asked, what would I say to him?
I mean, Rudy Guidet was never held fully accountable for
his crimes, right like he was ultimately held responsible for
Meredith's rape. He was never held responsible for wielding a
weapon against Meredith. They placed the weapon in my hands,
(33:49):
and so he was never like legally found to be
guilty of like actually murdering Meredith. He was more like
his murder conviction was more like he was an accomplice
to murder, and so like there was a certain like
a less heaviness to his sentence, there was more openness
to reducing his sentence as a result of that. And
(34:12):
of course he was never held accountable for breaking into
our house and stealing objects from our house. He was
never even accused of that. So he was never held
fully accountable for his crimes. And he has taken advantage
of the prosecution's fixation on me to divert blame onto me.
(34:36):
He saw me like he saw the prosecution already turning
me into a scapegoat, and and he just latched onto
that as soon as he was arrested. Interestingly, before he
was arrested, when in a private conversation that he had
with a friend of his that was being overheard by
the police, he said that I was not there and
I had nothing to do with it, and so he
(34:58):
was confused about why I I had been arrested. But like,
after he was arrested then he and I'm sure he
took the advice of his attorneys. He said just let's
take advantage of the fixation on Amanda and try to
get you as little blame as possible, because you're inevitably
(35:19):
going to be found guilty of this crime, but let's
see how much we can diminish your culpability.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
And to this day, like he takes.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
That position, and you know, I'm not surprised given his background.
I mean, I didn't know really anything about this person
prior to you know, his crime and his involvement in everything.
All I knew him as was a random guy who
(35:47):
played basketball with the guys who lived downstairs from us.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
That's all I knew.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I didn't even know his name, and I didn't know
until all these years later that he he has like
a really tragic backstory. You know, he was torn away
from his mom at a very young age, basically kidnapped
by his dad and taken to another country. And then
(36:11):
his dad basically neglected him and abandoned him, and he
was you know, shipped from foster home to foster home. Eventually,
you know, got into mischief. He started stealing, he started
doing drugs, He couldn't hold down a job, and at
twenty years old, he was spiraling. He he he was
(36:33):
trying to enjoy the life of a young person, and
he saw a lot of students around him who, like me,
came from privileged backgrounds, and we had the support of
our families, and we were studying abroad and having a
great time. And here he was, like, you know, constantly
financially strapped, constantly on edge, wanting to have fun, but
(36:55):
having all of these sort of things stacked against him.
And I think that he had a lot of anger
and a lot of resentment, and a lot of anger
towards women, and that ultimately wound up expressing itself in murder.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
And the thing that like, like, you.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Know, I'm obviously angry at him, but I don't like,
I'm more like I sort of understand how he went
completely off the rails. What I don't understand is why
he was allowed to go so far, Like to this day,
I don't understand why when he was arrested five days
(37:44):
before murdering Meredith and found to be armed and with
stolen property, he was just released. He was not held
accountable for that crime. He was never you know, tried,
He was not you know why that happened. Why he
was just allowed to walk the streets after committing that crime.
(38:09):
I to this day, I am really deeply troubled. And
of course, you know, on top of that, I'm troubled
by the fact that the truth of what happened to
Meredith and the person who did this to Meredith was
lost in the midst of the scandal story around me.
And that's you know, I can't blame Rudy Gidet for that,
(38:33):
Like he took advantage of that, but he didn't invent that.
Like the prosecution and the media made it possible for
a murderer to be let off the hook, right, And
so I'm more upset with our institutions for allowing that
(38:54):
to happen, because Meredith might never have been murdered if
he had been actually held accountable in the first place
for the things that he had already done.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
How redemptive and therapeutic was it to create the Hulu series,
to be an executive producer and be able to have
a voice, especially for the Amanda that spent four years
not having one.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, you know, I've been sticking up for my younger
self for a long time now, and I've been processing
this terrible experience alone for a long time, you know,
Like I have my family and my friends who support me,
but like in the sense of like really just digging
(39:50):
deep into what happened and how I feel about it
and what do I think about and what do I
do about it? That has been a really per personal
and intimate journey for me. And this series was the
first time that I really got to share that that
(40:11):
opportunity and that burden with other people. And it's been
a relief, honestly to be able to rely on a
village of people who all like deeply, deeply care about
getting it right, getting it like for the sake of truth,
(40:32):
but also for the sake of people. Like I'm not
the only person who was deeply impacted by the series
of events that happened in Italy. First and foremost, like
my roommate was murdered, like she didn't survive her study abroad, Like,
so there's that, But then there's also you know, my
boyfriend Raphael, and all of our families, and you know,
(40:54):
all of the city of Perusia, and even my prosecutor
and the police, like everyone who was like directly impacted
by this case did not emerge unscathed, right, and everyone
is processing this traumatic series events from their own personal perspective,
and that's something that I really wanted to respect in
(41:16):
the making of this series, because that's something that's really
deeply important to me. Like, to understand what this case
means to me, you have to understand that I'm also
deeply interested in how this case has also impacted other people, because.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I belong to people like that. That's something that is like.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Really really deeply rooted in my perspective, is that we
all belong to each other. We are all deeply interdependent,
for better and for worse, And in this case, this
is a story of how we are all interdependent for worse,
like in and that leads to these devastating consequences and
(42:00):
this journey that I then go on to try to
rehabilitate that sense of human connection. Like, one of the deepest,
the most traumatic parts of this for me was feeling
alienated from the rest of humanity because of what I
was accused of, and how like I didn't feel like
I belonged to people anymore. I was just I was
(42:22):
cast out, and really, like my journey has been one
of trying to re establish connection and to communicate understanding
and care. And so you know, this this show wouldn't
exist if it hadn't been for the fact that I
(42:42):
have sense, you know, since everything happened, I've gone back
to Italy to confront my prosecutor and to you know,
grieve the people and the lives that were you know,
irrevocably altered.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, and you even said too in that when you
were meeting your prosecutor that to this day now, he
would never have prosecuted you, knowing everything that he knows
and who you are as a person. And I think,
I mean you going to meet him, was there a
piece of you that needed to hear that you that
(43:15):
he knew that you were innocent? That almost and I'm sorry.
Maybe I don't know if he said, I don't know
if he actually said, I'm sorry, But did you need
to feel that and see that in person with him?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
That being the reason that you went, You know.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
I think anyone who has been hurt by someone by
another person can relate to this.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
But yeah, I really really.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Wanted him to say that he was wrong and that
he was sorry.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
I really really wanted that.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
And sometimes we think that something we really really want
is something that we need, and I think I almost
made that mistake.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Like that.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
That can be a crushing mistake when we confuse what
we really really want for what we need. And I
think this thing that saved me in that confrontation was
learning to recognize that, of course I really really wanted
(44:26):
him to say that he was wrong and that he
was sorry, but I didn't actually need that.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
What I needed.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Didn't have anything to do with him and had everything
to do with me, and that ultimately that was what
I needed to do.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
Was what brought me back to Italy and.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Led me to a place of accomplishing something for the
first time in my adult life that I felt like
defined me more than this horrible thing that I had
been accused of.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
You've obviously written your book, you have the Hulu series,
you're working on these wrongful conviction cases. The people that
still have this perception or that think you're guilty. Does
that piece of you just go? Do you still feel
like you need to defend yourself or is it you
You can sit in your truth. Obviously it might still
(45:28):
bother you and frustrate you, But what do you do
with that piece when there's still people that might have
this certain opinion?
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Yeah, you know, I'm not going to pretend that it
doesn't bother me, right, And I think that one thing
that is true of anyone who's been wrongly accused is
you do feel like you have to spend the rest
of your life proving your innocence every single day.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
That has to be exhausting, though it is exhausting.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
But the other thing that is true is that I
know that people who persist in believing that I had
anything to do with my roommate's murder, that says more
about them than it says about me. Like, I've learned
(46:22):
not to take that personally, because one it's not in
my control, but two, it was not like the accusation
didn't come from me, right, like this this was something like,
for whatever reason, this idea of the girl next door
(46:43):
gone psycho resonated with some people out there, and resonated
in spite of overwhelming evidence of my innocence, and that like,
I can't tell you why that is, but that has
everything to do with what's going going on in their brain, right,
Their brain for some reason is fixated on this idea
(47:05):
in spite of evidence to the contrary. And so I, like,
I do not take personally the fact that that is
something that belongs to that person, and in my own brain,
I try to just like let that go. Now, does
it mean that I'm still impacted by that perception? Yeah? Yeah,
(47:28):
people treat me as you know, and people treat me
a certain way. Given that that idea, given this idea
that like somehow I'm involved, I must be involved in
this crime. I can't actually be actually innocent. Like it
means that people like treat me a certain way and
have expectations of me that are not fair and are
(47:52):
not kind and are incredibly limiting and diminishing. And that
is something that I have to deal with every day,
but it is not something that I take personally or
that I feel like I have to I have to
do anything about. Like I've learned that I don't have
(48:12):
to be reactive to this terrible thing that happened to me.
I can be proactive in my life, informed certainly by
everything I've experienced, because you know, it's it's all in
my head still, But like I get to choose how
I am going to to you know, think about it,
(48:35):
process it, express it, and and I'm not going to
be held back by the way that people want to
diminish or limit me.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
So I had recently just finished filming a movie and
the director had saw my story. I did a little
story yesterday saying like, I'm interviewing you. So I was
doing some prep work and he's like, man, I just
find her story so fascinating. And I said, okay, if
there was a question, what would you want to ask her?
And I really liked his question, So shout out to
Tyler Russell. He's the best. But he said, I just
want to know, after all the years fighting and pushing
(49:08):
past the lies and the headlines, when was the moment
she actually felt free.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Mm. So, And you'll get to see this in the
Hulu show, because there's.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
The one time after all of this.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
When I, you know, I came out of that meeting
with my prosecutor having accomplished my goal. I set out
to do something, to say something to him, this person
who had harmed me, and I did it. And after
(49:57):
accomplishing that goal, I never felt more free. I you know,
I've just spent my entire adult life, my entire adult life,
grappling with the consequences of this man's decisions, bearing burdens
(50:21):
that I never should have had to bear, and feeling
just so trapped and like there wasn't a way forward
for me, and I had to push back against so
many people who said that what I wanted to do
(50:42):
was impossible, and I heard all of that and I said,
I'll never know unless I try, And so I did.
And I emerged from that meeting really truly feeling like
(51:02):
I had I had arrived at a place of closure
and that even though it didn't mean that like I
got all the things that I wanted, I accomplished all
the things that I needed, and learning to appreciate that
(51:24):
as freedom is what I you know, that has been
the journey of my.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
Life, like really really truly.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Understanding what it means to be free and what it
takes to be free.
Speaker 6 (51:40):
M thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing that.
You're so stunning. Just your introspection is just so beautiful
to me. I know I could, we could keep you
on for another I want.
Speaker 5 (51:53):
To actually have like five others.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
But yeah, but I know we need to let you go.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
But to.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
How does Amanda, the mom, the wife, the person that
you are reclaim joy in all of this.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
I mean a lot of it is just being joyful, right,
Like I've lived through a very very sad experience, and
that could have been just the emotional default setting of
my life from here on out. But like, I feel
really lucky that I'm the kind of person who is
(52:31):
capable of experiencing joy and recognizing joy and and like
recognizing the preciousness of that. Like, we are all so
lucky to be alive and to have the things that
we have, and so I think what helps me, you know,
Like again, one of those silver linings to this experience
(52:54):
is like, for a second there, I thought I was
never going to get to be a mom, And so
now when it gets hard, I still know that I'm
really really lucky to be a mom, and I just
savor it, even the hard stuff, and savoring life like
(53:14):
the like it is. We are so lucky to just
be here right now and so.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
Enjoy it, you know, Like.
Speaker 5 (53:27):
Absolutely, I man, I'm really proud of you. I Mean,
I know we're new to you, but I'm just really
proud of the person and the mom and spouse you
in friend, you can even be Oh thanks, where can
everybody just follow you along?
Speaker 1 (53:40):
And yeah? Promote it all right now?
Speaker 4 (53:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Okay, so definitely watch Hulu series The Twisted Tail. A
man in Ox. My latest book is called Free My
Search for Meaning. My podcast is called hard Knocks. I
also have a sub stack where I write essays and
you can find all of that and more at amandaknox
dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Amanda, it's been an absolute privilege. Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 4 (54:07):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
Yeah, take care, Bye girl,
Wind Down with Jane Kramer and I'm Heart Radio Podcast. Amanda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thank you so much for coming on today. I'm Jana,
This is Kristen, and I've been just deep diving into
the Hulu series. I say, you know, I knew about
your case, but to watch it, it's like, Okay, I'm
gonna be really honest, right, I knew about the case,
but I didn't know about the case.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So it's like, I knew what they portrayed you as,
but I didn't really ever do the research to kind
of understand all the layers with it.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Right, And why would you write like we all have
lives and you know, I in your place would also
not have spent the time and energy to deep dive
down the internet rabbit hole and try to make sense
of all of the information and misinformation that's out there. Yeah,
I completely understand, and I think that that is one
(01:00):
of the things that really motivated the people that I
worked with on this show was as soon as they
started deep diving into it, they were like, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, well, and I think that's what's so crazy and
why I'm just so excited for the next episode to
come out. But you know, because would you how would
you say the media in the US portrayed you?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, you know, I would say that on the whole,
the US media tended to take the stance of, wait
a second, is this one of our own? Actually, this
psychopathic murderer that we keep hearing about? Like there, I
think there was a sense from the US there was
(01:45):
a sense of skepticism that was not readily available in
Europe at the time. That said, there were plenty, plenty
of journalists who were working for American outlets who you know,
wrote not just terrible articles, but whole books about like
how I'm a psychopathic murderer. So it's I can't say
(02:06):
that like the US media was itself one unified front,
but it was some of the first instances of skepticism
that were really vocal were coming from the US, not exclusively,
you know. Again, also in Italy there were like two
voices out there, and like the number, like the huge
(02:28):
quantity of people who were writing and investigating I say
that with air quotes the case, right, yeah, there, So
those voices were that were questioning the narrative that was
immediately presented upon my arrest basically and for like months afterward,
(02:50):
there really was just this one narrative about, you know,
a sex game gone wrong, a girl on girl sex violence.
That was something that was out there in the media,
really unquestioned for months and months and months, and as
the investigation played out, and it wasn't really until the
trials got started and the prosecution was forced to present
(03:15):
the evidence in a public forum, like the actual evidence
that they had instead of the rumors of what evidence
they had that people started to say, wait a second,
we were promised a smoking gun, we were promised a motive.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Where is all of that?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, and I think too, like from what I remember,
it was like the party, the US party girl, you know,
and that's that's kind of all I really took in, honestly.
And then and then from watching all this, I mean,
I'm just a first and foremost, I'm so sorry that
you had to go through that and to this day
(03:48):
still have I mean, to have books about someone portraying
you as this sociopath murderer. I mean, what basis do
they have to even say that when there is when
actually somebody got accused of the murder, right.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, I think that's what's so interesting about this case
in terms of how it compares to other wrongful convictions
that I don't know. Do you guys, Do you guys
dig into wrongful conviction cases all that much?
Speaker 5 (04:14):
I'm ish Well, ironically, I just spent last week with
Anthony ray Hinton.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Oh yeah, so I don't. I don't know if there's
like a theme in my life right now, but.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
Just even hearing his story was, you know, absolutely crazy,
and just who you both are on the other side
of this is absolutely, like wildly inspiring to me.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But just I'm in awe of both of.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
You, Oh wow, because it's very easy to be angry,
and it's very easy to come out of this with
a chip on your shoulder, to say the least, and
you both have that in common, which I think is
like this beautiful redemption in so many ways.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I did want to ask too.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
You know, It's like, we talk so much about you
being wrongly used, and we should obviously, but you also
had someone that you know get murdered. Yeah, And I
think we kind of like scoop past that often. And
I just can't imagine you as a young girl being
in a country that is not your home and losing
someone that was close enough to you in a really
(05:20):
violent way. Tell us what that does to young Amanda
and now Amanda.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And then on top of that too, not to pile
that on from the portrayal in the Hulu, not having
that emotional thing being kind of a red flag to
those detectives, like were you just kind of numb to it?
Is that why the emotion wasn't there? Or yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's a lot to that. Yeah, yeah, So there, you're right,
(05:49):
and thank you for taking note of that. That had
none of the horribly traumatic things that resulted from my
arrest taken place, right, had I never been suspected and
arrested and put through years and years of trials and
you know, global vilification, there would still be the trauma
of coming home and discovering a crime scene and over
(06:13):
the course of a few days realizing what had taken place,
which is that, you know, this this young woman who
was very much like my age, my you know, was
the other girl studying abroad who lived in a house
with me, like basically like the English equivalent of me
in the household, was just raped and murdered in her
(06:36):
own bedroom after coming home from you know, spending the
evening with her friends. Like that in itself would have
been a life altering traumatic experience for me in my life,
the one because of this weird sense of like, oh
my god, I I I like someone close to me
(07:01):
is now just gone, just disappeared, like and in a
horrific way. And I definitely had like really big emotional
mood swings about that in those early days. I think
that a lot of people really fixate on those moments
where I'm sort of just shell shocked, like there's a lot,
(07:22):
you know, there's this imagery of me outside of my house,
you know, trying to sort of take this all in.
And my first sort of reaction is almost like dead possum,
Like I'm just sort of like, oh my god, uh,
what's going on? And of course part of that is
that I'm not understanding everything that everyone is saying. Everyone's
(07:43):
yelling and Italian, and I'm not fluent in Italian, so
I'm trying to piece together what's going on. And also
I'm sort of in shock at you know, understanding that
something horrible is going on. So there's that shell shock reaction,
But then I also had other reactions like that. Again,
depending on how you what your sort of what your
(08:07):
baseline assumptions are can be interpreted in many different ways.
And that's one of the things that we try to
show in the in the Hulu series is that the
same like people can look at the same set of facts,
but depending upon their unconscious biases and their base assumptions,
they're going to interpret those same set of facts in
(08:30):
very very different ways.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And one of.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Those was this you know well reported moment when the
police took me back to my house, you know, a
few days after it had been closed off as a
crime scene, and like basically this was the first time
I'm entering into my house with the knowledge of what
had taken place there. Right Like in that moment when
(08:55):
I came home and discovered a crime scene, I didn't
discover the murder. I discovered a break in. I never
actually saw into my roommate's room, so I never saw
her body. I never saw, like, you know, the horrible,
bloody crime scene that was not like imprinted in me.
And it wasn't really until I was in the police
station and answering their questions and asking them questions like
(09:18):
what happened? What was actually what's going on that they
told me that my roommate had been stabbed to death,
and so I'm like reeling from this. They've take me
back to my house where now I have this information
in my head, and they asked me to go and
like sift through the knife drawer in our kitchen to
(09:40):
see if there are any knives missing, which immediately to
me sounds like they're asking me to see if there's
like I'm looking for basically if there's a murder weapon.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, they asked in the show, They're like, is there
a missing knife?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
And You're like, is there a missing knife? And I'm
like okay. So I'm searching through these not like this
knife drawer and I'm touching these knives, these like sharp objects.
And now with this like whole new context of something
like this was used to hurt and murder.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
My friend, like, I freak I freak out.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I have a full blown like I'm sobbing, I'm hyperventilating,
I'm freaking out because like the reality of this like
devastating thing is really hitting me in this really visceral way.
And so that's my experience of that moment. But the
police who are looking on who are already assuming that
(10:39):
I'm not telling the full truth that I'm somehow involved.
They look at that moment and say, this is her confessing,
This is a confession, This is her like her body
is giving away her sense of guilt. And of course
that's their interpretation of that moment. But like that for me,
(11:00):
was me having a very emotional moment about what happened
to my roommate. That just happened to transpire in a
moment where the cameras weren't rolling outside of you know,
like they would have seen me crying hysterically if they
had seen me in that moment, but they didn't. And
so there's this interesting, you know, cherry picking of moments
(11:23):
in that immediate wake of discovering the crime scene. In
those days when I'm being questioned by police, there's this
cherry picking to say, oh, Amanda was not emotional, therefore
she was guilty. But then Amanda was emotional, therefore she
was guilty. And there's always through that lens of sort
of assuming my guilt because you know, like they did,
(11:48):
they assumed that I was involved somehow, that I knew
something from the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
You also are really young.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I mean, we keep acting like this is like a listen,
I know, forty three year old me and twenty something
me are like wildly different people who have had crazy
different experiences and can process information differently slower, like you're
a kid at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Still, yeah, And I think notably, I was a kid
who had never had anything bad happen in my life.
Like I was raised by a loving family, where like
we didn't have conflict in my life. I didn't have
dramatic things in my life, and I certainly didn't have
any interactions with the police before I had military in
(12:36):
my family. So I was raised to sort of be
respectful and deferential to authority.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
But like I didn't have any.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Context for how to respond to this situation. And of
course I'm also how many frickin' miles away from home
and everyone I know, and I haven't actually been in
Italy all that long, and so I don't really have
a stable sense of like community or like people to
lean on. And so I was just likemediately thrown into
(13:10):
a situation where I was utterly underresourced and unprepared, and
I was a deer in headlights.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I really didn't know what.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
To do except to do as I was told.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
In the Hulu show, there was two things that I
just had certain questions on one was when the detectives
were saying that your boyfriend at the time he wasn't
confirming your alibi that you were with him. M hmm, yeah,
which I didn't understand, and why to that. And then
also what I guess I'm still trying to understand what
(13:57):
confession is because when that went on the news, thing
she confessed and I'm like, what piece were they saying
was a confession?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
M great.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
So one thing that you should know, which is really
important both in Italy but also here in the United States,
is that police can lie to you, and they can
and will lie to you if they think that lying
to you is going to manipulate you into giving them
(14:29):
the information that they think you are withholding from them.
And so during my interrogation, which by the way, they
this is something that people do here in the US
as well, there's this difference and this is again really
important to know that of course none of us really know,
but there's a very distinct difference between an interview and
(14:52):
an interrogation. Are you guys aware of this difference?
Speaker 5 (14:56):
I don't, actually, I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean but no, right,
I would assume, but no, yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Yeah, right, So.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
The things we don't know and the things that they
sort of like rely on you not knowing. So the
difference between an interview and an interrogation is that an
interrogation means that you are in custody. Really you don't
really have the right to leave, and therefore you have
human rights that get triggered. Right. You are entitled to
(15:25):
an attorney. You are entitled to remain silent if you
don't speak the language. You are entitled to an interpreter.
These are all rights that we all have that law
enforcement is supposed to respect. If you are being interrogated,
if you are not being interrogated, if you are being interviewed,
technically none of those rights apply. But the problem is
(15:50):
how do you tell the difference between whether or not
you are being interrogated and whether or not you were
being interviewed, because it's not clear. It's happening all in
the same room with all of the same people, and
oftentimes interviews morph into interrogations depending on what you happen
to say during your interview, and it all depends upon
(16:12):
the police and what they believe, whether or not they
believe you are telling the truth. So as an innocent
person who is in that scenario. You have no idea
that the police are suddenly going to shift gears and
assume that you are lying to them, and now they
(16:32):
are going to start interrogating you with the presumption of
your guilt or that you are lying, and therefore they
are going to start using really, really coercive and manipulative tactics.
In either case interview or interrogation, police can lie to you.
And so over the course of my what the police
claim was merely an interview, they say I was never interrogated.
(16:55):
I was merely interviewed. They told me a number of
lies that I was present at the crime scene when
the crime occurred, and they knew that from physical proof
evidence that they found at the crime scene. And they
told me that Rafaela said that I was not with
him at his house. Now it is true that at
(17:20):
the same time that I was being interrogated, Raphael my boyfriend,
was also being interrogated. He was in another room being interrogated,
and at a certain point in his interrogation he was
similarly coerced into making false statements. So they told him
that I was not with him the night of the murder.
(17:41):
That they know that he's lying for me and that
he needs to stop lying or else he's going to
end up in prison. And so at a certain point
he flips. But like in the course of the timeline,
I don't know, Like to this day, I don't know
when he flipped. Did he flip before they broke, Like,
did he break before they broke me? Did they just
(18:04):
come into the room and lie to me and tell
me that he had changed his like changed his story
just to make me break, Like, I don't know, because
the police are allowed to lie to me.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
So either way, like there there.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
It is true that during his interrogation, he also was
coerced into signing a false statement, saying, maybe Amanda left
after I fell asleep, and she came back afterwards and
then told me that I had to lie for her,
like maybe that happened, and then he signs that, and
then I, you know, right, well, I don't have any
(18:40):
memory of this, but maybe I was there and maybe
it was you know, my boss Patrick, because he said
sent me a text message like that's my statement, and
then you know a few hours later, I retract it,
but by then it's too late. So that does that
answer your question about like the whole interrogation and the
statements and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
At what point were you like, oh, like, there, this is,
this is not going you know, because you know you're innocent,
so you know, you know, you're there for so many
days and hours and it's and then you're in the
prison and you're like no, no, like I'm but I'm
not a murderer, and I'm just it's like, at what
(19:20):
point were you just like this is I'm fucked.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
I mean, I wouldn't say there's a single moment because
of the immensity of the situation and like the sort.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Of trauma upon trauma upon trauma.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Of it all.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Like there were moments of realization over time, Like even
you know, I remember there were even moments during my
interrogation where I was like, oh my god, oh my god,
what's happening.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Oh my god, I'm I'm fucked.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Like there's you know, when the police started to convince me.
So what they did to convince me of this alternate
reality is they told me that I had witnessed something
so traumatic that my brain had blacked it out. And
so even though I had no memory of witnessing anyone murder, Meredith.
(20:15):
Of course I didn't have a memory of it because
it was repressed, and so I'm like going, well, I,
first of all, I don't know that the police would
ever lie to me and could lie to me, So
I'm assuming that everything that they're telling me is true.
They're crafting this like false reality around me, and I'm
trying to make sense of it. And already I'm like
this in a kind of alternate reality because I never
(20:39):
expected to come home and discover my roommate murdered, so like,
already I'm sort of in a state of like destabilization.
And then the police start putting this pressure on me
and start suggesting this alternate reality to me that I
have witnessed something terrible and I'm so traumatized by it
that I can't even remember it. So like when that's
(21:00):
guarded to like implant itself in my mind, that was
a huge moment of freaking out because I didn't know
what was true or what was not true anymore. Like
I had memories of what I was doing that night.
I was with my boyfriend, we were watching a movie,
we made dinner, like all of these very real memories,
and they're telling me that they're not real, and that
(21:21):
the real memories have been repressed and replaced by fantasy.
And so I'm just like trying to make sense of
this and feeling absolutely crazy, and I like, I completely
break down. I'm hysterical, I'm sobbing, and I don't know,
and I just put my faith in the police that
they must know, and I sort of just say, Okay, fine,
(21:45):
I guess I guess you must be right, and I sign,
you know, sign away my freedom that way, like that's
that's how it happened in that moment. But then, of
course I'm the pressure cooker of that entire progation disappears
and I have a moment to sleep and I wake
up and I realize, oh no, this, you know, I've
(22:07):
I really don't have memories of this, and I really
do remember being at my boyfriend's house. This is all
a big mistake. I write a retraction. I think this
is all just a big misunderstanding. The police take me
to prison, but they don't tell me they're taking me
to prison. They say that they're taking me to a
holding place for my own protection. So again like they're
lying to me and giving me this false sense of security.
(22:30):
They take me to prison. They say it's only going
to be a for a few days. I'll get to
see my mom, And of course it's not a few days.
I spend one thousand, four hundred and twenty eight days there,
and if it were up to the prosecution, I never
would have left. But like even then, like even after I,
you know, sit in front of a judge and I
hear them actually accuse me of participating in the murder
(22:54):
of my roommate.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
Like.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
The stages of grief kick in, where you think this
cannot be real, like this cannot be real, like how
can this possibly be happening? And I get into this
state of like this this is just a big misunderstanding,
and when the police do the actual investigation, they'll find
out who really committed the crime, and then they'll realize
they were wrong and they'll feel really bad and it'll
(23:21):
be all okay. And of course that doesn't happen, and
then I think, oh, well, you know, as soon as
the trial plays out and a judge and a jury
here that there's like literally no evidence that I had
anything to do with this, they'll figure it out and
I'll get to go home. And then that doesn't happen,
and so like there were moments throughout this entire journey
where I thought the right thing was going to happen,
(23:45):
and I kept getting barred, doors slammed in my face,
and I had to grapple with a new existential crisis
after another. And and you know, part of that you
mentioned like being interested in the next episode of the
(24:08):
show that's going to come out, Like part of that
trauma and that existential crisis is even after you know,
I'm acquitted and vindicated and freed, it doesn't mean that
I get to go back to the life that I
had before I was accused of this crime. Like I'm
forever branded with the accusation of murder, the accusation that
(24:33):
I did something horrible to my friend, and that never
goes away, And like there's an existential crisis there where it's.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Like, oh my god, I'm fucked.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Like there's nothing I could possibly do in my life
that could ever define me more than this horrific thing
that I was accused of that I didn't do.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
And that's a whole whole.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
New level of being fuked that like I've had to
grapple with over the years.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Man.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Sorry, I just while you were there and then being
and then them actually finding the true killer, them still
doing your trial thinking that you guys, I guess, were accomplices.
Is that you know kind of what I was understanding
now knowing that he's out after you know, his thirteen
(25:41):
year sentence. How I mean, if you had any words
to him, I mean, because he's still he's still pleading,
he's not guilty, which is just even though he's up
for a charge right now for his ex girlfriend for
stalking and you know, just not being a good human.
So it's like, have you ever had a face to
(26:02):
face with him? If you haven't, is there anything you
would say to him, because it's like he gets to
just kind of have this quick trial not really in
the media. Didn't even I didn't even know, That's the thing.
I didn't even know they caught the killer until I'm
watching your show that you produced, agreed, So that that's
where I'm like, wait, then why did she go to jail?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I don't know what?
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
More about him?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And then he gets out? Are you kidding me? She
would still be in there, you know, and we don
still hear more about you than we did about him,
talk about wrongfully convicted and then wrongfully the whole thing,
you know, with the with the with the court system,
you still have to become Amanda a person, Amanda a wife,
Amanda a mom, like with all of these things.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
So yeah, so something that makes this case true unique,
I would say among wrongful conviction cases is very often
and wrongful can cases when they got the wrong person
it's because they didn't find the right person right, Like,
they didn't, you know, investigate the DNA evidence they went
(27:10):
off of like some mistaken eyewitness testimony. The wrong person
goes to jail, but everyone thinks, we're good, we got
the guy. And it's only until like twenty years later
that they test the DNA and it proves that it
was someone else, and then everyone goes, oh, we were wrong, oops,
and they let the guy out. In this case, like
(27:32):
within weeks, the police knew who committed this crime for real.
But by then they had already arrested me, my boyfriend,
and my boss and announced case closed to the entire world.
And so they had already taken a stand about what
(27:56):
they what they believed to be true about what happened
to Meredith. That she was murdered in a in a
murder orgy, and that was orchestrated by me, that they
had already like put a stake in the ground as
their claim to what happened. And then the forensic evidence
(28:18):
comes back and shows that there's no evidence of me, Raphael,
my boyfriend, or my boss Patrick Lumumba at the crime scene.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
And they go, oh, who is this evidence of?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
And it is evidence of a known local burglar who
has a history of breaking and entering, is known to
be aggressive towards women, has been caught once like five
days earlier, having broken into another facility and was carrying
a knife and stolen goods with him.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Like all of that.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Becomes reality, and the prosecution is faced with a choice.
Their choice is to go back on everything they've done
up to this point and say we were wrong. Here's
the actual person who committed this crime, or they have
to say we were only slightly wrong. Patrick is innocent,
(29:20):
but Rudy is the one who's actually Rudy's the black guy.
There's a black guy involved. It wasn't Patrick, it's Rudy.
And this whole scenario that we've concocted, which is the
murder orgy orchestrated by Amanda. That still is true, and
that's that's what they decided to do, is they decided
to say, we were only wrong about one thing, and
(29:42):
that was we got the wrong black guy, and everything
else that we have announced to the world remains true.
And you know, it's it's not just ego, right like,
I don't some people argue that it at that point,
that was when you know, the prosecution and the police
(30:04):
revealed themselves to be utterly corrupt, right like, they made
a very selfish decision to save their own face, their
own asses, instead of acknowledge that they, you know, had
traumatized innocent people. But they didn't do that, And I
don't think that they did it just out of a
sense of ego, although I don't put it past people's ego.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
To be involved in that.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
I think that the police were and the prosecutor, who
is the one who leads the investigation in Italy, they're
very much, you know, working together. It's a little bit
different than here in the United States. They were really
compelled by a number of things that they had assumed
(30:51):
about the crime scene from the very beginning, which was
that one, there was no break in the police and
the prosecutor believed from day one that the break in
that I had called the police to report was actually faked,
faked by me in order to divert attention away from
(31:15):
the fact that I, a person who lived in the
house was involved in the crime.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
That's what they believed.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
So already, like they have this one hundred percent belief
that even though there's a guy who has a history
of breaking and entering is involved in the crime, this
is not a case of a break like a break in.
This is a case of someone in the house orchestrated
this crime and attempted to cover it up. Why they
believe that, that's a great question. My prosecutor was has
(31:46):
a history of investigating cases that he believes were cover ups.
So he tends, you know, he's he's investigated mafia, he's
investigated the freemasons. You know, these like social clubs that
he says, are you know, political covers for corruption.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
He has this like.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Big, long time history of looking into cases with the
assumption that there is more than what appears to the
naked eye. And so I believe that he has this
unconscious bias even walking into what is very apparently a
open and shutcase of breaking enter, rape, and murder, like
(32:30):
he is already primed to believe that things aren't as
what they appear. And then, of course they have the
statements that they coerced me into signing in their interrogation,
which they believe prove that I was physically present when
the crime occurred, because in their minds, no innocent person
(32:51):
could be compelled to place themselves at the crime scene
if they weren't actually at the crime scene when it happened.
So they they also have an unconscious bias about that,
and so in their mind, these are compelling pieces of
evidence to suggest that even though they were wrong about
who exactly was involved, they were right to assume that
(33:14):
I was involved and that I was covering it up,
and that I was the orchestrator of this entire horrific event.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
And meanwhile, this man just gets out.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yes, yes, And you asked, what would I say to him?
I mean, Rudy Guidet was never held fully accountable for
his crimes, right like he was ultimately held responsible for
Meredith's rape. He was never held responsible for wielding a
weapon against Meredith. They placed the weapon in my hands,
(33:49):
and so he was never like legally found to be
guilty of like actually murdering Meredith. He was more like
his murder conviction was more like he was an accomplice
to murder, and so like there was a certain like
a less heaviness to his sentence, there was more openness
to reducing his sentence as a result of that. And
(34:12):
of course he was never held accountable for breaking into
our house and stealing objects from our house. He was
never even accused of that. So he was never held
fully accountable for his crimes. And he has taken advantage
of the prosecution's fixation on me to divert blame onto me.
(34:36):
He saw me like he saw the prosecution already turning
me into a scapegoat, and and he just latched onto
that as soon as he was arrested. Interestingly, before he
was arrested, when in a private conversation that he had
with a friend of his that was being overheard by
the police, he said that I was not there and
I had nothing to do with it, and so he
(34:58):
was confused about why I I had been arrested. But like,
after he was arrested then he and I'm sure he
took the advice of his attorneys. He said just let's
take advantage of the fixation on Amanda and try to
get you as little blame as possible, because you're inevitably
(35:19):
going to be found guilty of this crime, but let's
see how much we can diminish your culpability.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
And to this day, like he takes.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
That position, and you know, I'm not surprised given his background.
I mean, I didn't know really anything about this person
prior to you know, his crime and his involvement in everything.
All I knew him as was a random guy who
(35:47):
played basketball with the guys who lived downstairs from us.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
That's all I knew.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I didn't even know his name, and I didn't know
until all these years later that he he has like
a really tragic backstory. You know, he was torn away
from his mom at a very young age, basically kidnapped
by his dad and taken to another country. And then
(36:11):
his dad basically neglected him and abandoned him, and he
was you know, shipped from foster home to foster home. Eventually,
you know, got into mischief. He started stealing, he started
doing drugs, He couldn't hold down a job, and at
twenty years old, he was spiraling. He he he was
(36:33):
trying to enjoy the life of a young person, and
he saw a lot of students around him who, like me,
came from privileged backgrounds, and we had the support of
our families, and we were studying abroad and having a
great time. And here he was, like, you know, constantly
financially strapped, constantly on edge, wanting to have fun, but
(36:55):
having all of these sort of things stacked against him.
And I think that he had a lot of anger
and a lot of resentment, and a lot of anger
towards women, and that ultimately wound up expressing itself in murder.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
And the thing that like, like, you.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Know, I'm obviously angry at him, but I don't like,
I'm more like I sort of understand how he went
completely off the rails. What I don't understand is why
he was allowed to go so far, Like to this day,
I don't understand why when he was arrested five days
(37:44):
before murdering Meredith and found to be armed and with
stolen property, he was just released. He was not held
accountable for that crime. He was never you know, tried,
He was not you know why that happened. Why he
was just allowed to walk the streets after committing that crime.
(38:09):
I to this day, I am really deeply troubled. And
of course, you know, on top of that, I'm troubled
by the fact that the truth of what happened to
Meredith and the person who did this to Meredith was
lost in the midst of the scandal story around me.
And that's you know, I can't blame Rudy Gidet for that,
(38:33):
Like he took advantage of that, but he didn't invent that.
Like the prosecution and the media made it possible for
a murderer to be let off the hook, right, And
so I'm more upset with our institutions for allowing that
(38:54):
to happen, because Meredith might never have been murdered if
he had been actually held accountable in the first place
for the things that he had already done.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
How redemptive and therapeutic was it to create the Hulu series,
to be an executive producer and be able to have
a voice, especially for the Amanda that spent four years
not having one.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, you know, I've been sticking up for my younger
self for a long time now, and I've been processing
this terrible experience alone for a long time, you know,
Like I have my family and my friends who support me,
but like in the sense of like really just digging
(39:50):
deep into what happened and how I feel about it
and what do I think about and what do I
do about it? That has been a really per personal
and intimate journey for me. And this series was the
first time that I really got to share that that
(40:11):
opportunity and that burden with other people. And it's been
a relief, honestly to be able to rely on a
village of people who all like deeply, deeply care about
getting it right, getting it like for the sake of truth,
(40:32):
but also for the sake of people. Like I'm not
the only person who was deeply impacted by the series
of events that happened in Italy. First and foremost, like
my roommate was murdered, like she didn't survive her study abroad, Like,
so there's that, But then there's also you know, my
boyfriend Raphael, and all of our families, and you know,
(40:54):
all of the city of Perusia, and even my prosecutor
and the police, like everyone who was like directly impacted
by this case did not emerge unscathed, right, and everyone
is processing this traumatic series events from their own personal perspective,
and that's something that I really wanted to respect in
(41:16):
the making of this series, because that's something that's really
deeply important to me. Like, to understand what this case
means to me, you have to understand that I'm also
deeply interested in how this case has also impacted other people, because.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I belong to people like that. That's something that is like.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Really really deeply rooted in my perspective, is that we
all belong to each other. We are all deeply interdependent,
for better and for worse, And in this case, this
is a story of how we are all interdependent for worse,
like in and that leads to these devastating consequences and
(42:00):
this journey that I then go on to try to
rehabilitate that sense of human connection. Like, one of the deepest,
the most traumatic parts of this for me was feeling
alienated from the rest of humanity because of what I
was accused of, and how like I didn't feel like
I belonged to people anymore. I was just I was
(42:22):
cast out, and really, like my journey has been one
of trying to re establish connection and to communicate understanding
and care. And so you know, this this show wouldn't
exist if it hadn't been for the fact that I
(42:42):
have sense, you know, since everything happened, I've gone back
to Italy to confront my prosecutor and to you know,
grieve the people and the lives that were you know,
irrevocably altered.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, and you even said too in that when you
were meeting your prosecutor that to this day now, he
would never have prosecuted you, knowing everything that he knows
and who you are as a person. And I think,
I mean you going to meet him, was there a
piece of you that needed to hear that you that
(43:15):
he knew that you were innocent? That almost and I'm sorry.
Maybe I don't know if he said, I don't know
if he actually said, I'm sorry, But did you need
to feel that and see that in person with him?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
That being the reason that you went, You know.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
I think anyone who has been hurt by someone by
another person can relate to this.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
But yeah, I really really.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Wanted him to say that he was wrong and that
he was sorry.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
I really really wanted that.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
And sometimes we think that something we really really want
is something that we need, and I think I almost
made that mistake.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Like that.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
That can be a crushing mistake when we confuse what
we really really want for what we need. And I
think this thing that saved me in that confrontation was
learning to recognize that, of course I really really wanted
(44:26):
him to say that he was wrong and that he
was sorry, but I didn't actually need that.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
What I needed.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Didn't have anything to do with him and had everything
to do with me, and that ultimately that was what
I needed to do.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
Was what brought me back to Italy and.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Led me to a place of accomplishing something for the
first time in my adult life that I felt like
defined me more than this horrible thing that I had
been accused of.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
You've obviously written your book, you have the Hulu series,
you're working on these wrongful conviction cases. The people that
still have this perception or that think you're guilty. Does
that piece of you just go? Do you still feel
like you need to defend yourself or is it you
You can sit in your truth. Obviously it might still
(45:28):
bother you and frustrate you, But what do you do
with that piece when there's still people that might have
this certain opinion?
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Yeah, you know, I'm not going to pretend that it
doesn't bother me, right, And I think that one thing
that is true of anyone who's been wrongly accused is
you do feel like you have to spend the rest
of your life proving your innocence every single day.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
That has to be exhausting, though it is exhausting.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
But the other thing that is true is that I
know that people who persist in believing that I had
anything to do with my roommate's murder, that says more
about them than it says about me. Like, I've learned
(46:22):
not to take that personally, because one it's not in
my control, but two, it was not like the accusation
didn't come from me, right, like this this was something like,
for whatever reason, this idea of the girl next door
(46:43):
gone psycho resonated with some people out there, and resonated
in spite of overwhelming evidence of my innocence, and that like,
I can't tell you why that is, but that has
everything to do with what's going going on in their brain, right,
Their brain for some reason is fixated on this idea
(47:05):
in spite of evidence to the contrary. And so I, like,
I do not take personally the fact that that is
something that belongs to that person, and in my own brain,
I try to just like let that go. Now, does
it mean that I'm still impacted by that perception? Yeah? Yeah,
(47:28):
people treat me as you know, and people treat me
a certain way. Given that that idea, given this idea
that like somehow I'm involved, I must be involved in
this crime. I can't actually be actually innocent. Like it
means that people like treat me a certain way and
have expectations of me that are not fair and are
(47:52):
not kind and are incredibly limiting and diminishing. And that
is something that I have to deal with every day,
but it is not something that I take personally or
that I feel like I have to I have to
do anything about. Like I've learned that I don't have
(48:12):
to be reactive to this terrible thing that happened to me.
I can be proactive in my life, informed certainly by
everything I've experienced, because you know, it's it's all in
my head still, But like I get to choose how
I am going to to you know, think about it,
(48:35):
process it, express it, and and I'm not going to
be held back by the way that people want to
diminish or limit me.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
So I had recently just finished filming a movie and
the director had saw my story. I did a little
story yesterday saying like, I'm interviewing you. So I was
doing some prep work and he's like, man, I just
find her story so fascinating. And I said, okay, if
there was a question, what would you want to ask her?
And I really liked his question, So shout out to
Tyler Russell. He's the best. But he said, I just
want to know, after all the years fighting and pushing
(49:08):
past the lies and the headlines, when was the moment
she actually felt free.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Mm. So, And you'll get to see this in the
Hulu show, because there's.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
The one time after all of this.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
When I, you know, I came out of that meeting
with my prosecutor having accomplished my goal. I set out
to do something, to say something to him, this person
who had harmed me, and I did it. And after
(49:57):
accomplishing that goal, I never felt more free. I you know,
I've just spent my entire adult life, my entire adult life,
grappling with the consequences of this man's decisions, bearing burdens
(50:21):
that I never should have had to bear, and feeling
just so trapped and like there wasn't a way forward
for me, and I had to push back against so
many people who said that what I wanted to do
(50:42):
was impossible, and I heard all of that and I said,
I'll never know unless I try, And so I did.
And I emerged from that meeting really truly feeling like
(51:02):
I had I had arrived at a place of closure
and that even though it didn't mean that like I
got all the things that I wanted, I accomplished all
the things that I needed, and learning to appreciate that
(51:24):
as freedom is what I you know, that has been
the journey of my.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
Life, like really really truly.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Understanding what it means to be free and what it
takes to be free.
Speaker 6 (51:40):
M thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing that.
You're so stunning. Just your introspection is just so beautiful
to me. I know I could, we could keep you
on for another I want.
Speaker 5 (51:53):
To actually have like five others.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
But yeah, but I know we need to let you go.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
But to.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
How does Amanda, the mom, the wife, the person that
you are reclaim joy in all of this.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
I mean a lot of it is just being joyful, right,
Like I've lived through a very very sad experience, and
that could have been just the emotional default setting of
my life from here on out. But like, I feel
really lucky that I'm the kind of person who is
(52:31):
capable of experiencing joy and recognizing joy and and like
recognizing the preciousness of that. Like, we are all so
lucky to be alive and to have the things that
we have, and so I think what helps me, you know,
Like again, one of those silver linings to this experience
(52:54):
is like, for a second there, I thought I was
never going to get to be a mom, And so
now when it gets hard, I still know that I'm
really really lucky to be a mom, and I just
savor it, even the hard stuff, and savoring life like
(53:14):
the like it is. We are so lucky to just
be here right now and so.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
Enjoy it, you know, Like.
Speaker 5 (53:27):
Absolutely, I man, I'm really proud of you. I Mean,
I know we're new to you, but I'm just really
proud of the person and the mom and spouse you
in friend, you can even be Oh thanks, where can
everybody just follow you along?
Speaker 1 (53:40):
And yeah? Promote it all right now?
Speaker 4 (53:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Okay, so definitely watch Hulu series The Twisted Tail. A
man in Ox. My latest book is called Free My
Search for Meaning. My podcast is called hard Knocks. I
also have a sub stack where I write essays and
you can find all of that and more at amandaknox
dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Amanda, it's been an absolute privilege. Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 4 (54:07):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
Yeah, take care, Bye girl,
Host
Jana Kramer
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