August 20, 2025 • 42 mins
Amanda Knox went from a college student studying abroad to the center of one of the most notorious wrongful convictions of our time. Vilified by tabloids and betrayed by a justice system, she spent years fighting not just for her freedom, but for her truth — the actual truth — to be told.
Now a bestselling author, journalist, and advocate, Amanda is reclaiming her voice and dismantling the false narratives adopted by a media fever storm that once defined her. Find out how Hulu’s highly anticipated limited series "The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox" empowered her to finally seize control of her own story, and how another woman who intimately understands media vilification, none other than Monica Lewinsky, joined the deeply personal fight.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello Whipsmarties.
Today we are joined by a guest that has fascinated
(00:21):
me for nearly twenty years and likewise the world. Today's
guest is none other than Amanda Knox. You likely know
Amanda as an American author, an activist, a journalist. You
might know her as a woman who was wrongfully convicted
in college for the murder of her roommate in Italy
(00:43):
in a year that she was studying abroad. And after
that wrongful conviction in two thousand and seven, she spent
four years behind bars, eventually having her conviction overturned when
the man who murdered her roommate was sentenced. The powerful
thing about Amanda's story is not only that she became
(01:03):
a casualty of an unjust justice system, but that she
became fodder for a media machine that didn't care about
the truth. They cared about scandal and paper sales and
salacious stories that they knew would clickbait around the world.
And this young girl's life was turned upside down in
(01:26):
a way that has had lasting and permanent effects in
some circles. Through her prolonged legal process and her advocacy
for other women behind bars, Amanda began to find purpose
again and eventually that purpose led to the passion of advocacy.
She has become a best selling author. She has become
(01:48):
a journalist. Her first book was titled Waiting to Be Heard,
a memoir. In twenty eighteen, she chose to shed light
on stories like hers hosting The Scarlet Letter Report, a
television series that examines the incredibly toxic nature of the
way that we publicly shame women in particular. And her
(02:10):
second memoir, released this year, is titled Free My Search
for Meaning. It is an absolutely stunning book that affected
me so deeply, and now we are on the precipice
of her life story being turned into a show. It'll
be hitting Hulu on August twentieth, titled The Twisted Tale
(02:31):
of Amanda Knox, and Amanda served as executive producer alongside
another woman who knows what it's like to be turned
into media fodder, Monica Lewinsky. Amanda's going to join us
today to talk about her journey, how she's learned to heal,
what it means to stand up for others, and what
(02:52):
it means to reclaim her story. Let's dive in with
Amanda Knox. Amanda, I am so just thrilled, elated, excited
(03:13):
to have you on the show today. Thank you so
much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Oh well, thank you for having me. I'm excited as well.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, I think about you a lot, which probably sounds
a bit odd, but interestingly, there have been certain touch
points in my life as a woman who very quickly
was in the public I at twenty one. Who you know,
(03:41):
my first show started in two thousand and three. Your
life obviously exploded into public consciousness in two thousand and seven.
The Internet and the forums and the chat rooms and
things where their Facebook was their social media wasn't yet.
But we have both in our sort of peer group,
(04:05):
experienced cycles of becoming something for others that maybe doesn't
feel true for us totally. And what's been so interesting
to me about certain people who have tracked through hearing
about their experiences and going, oh, wow, someday I want
(04:26):
to like have a glass of wine with that person
and talk about it. You know, things you've shared more
recently and in your second book and the frankness with
which you've talked about your experiences have made me go like, oh,
definitely we need to hang at some point.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So let's put it on the calendar.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Oh, I was like, I got to get her on
the show, and then I also have to ask her
like out for a meal. So anyway, I just wanted
you to know the way I kind of think about
what you do in the world, with your life and
your circumstances, and I really admire you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Oh well, thank you very much. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I know that I still tend to be a rather
controversial figure in some people's minds. So I'm really I'm
really thrilled that the messages that I'm putting out there
and the way that I tell my story has resonated
with you, because that's really the goal is like, after
being really like ostracized and elevated onto this pedestal but
(05:34):
only to be viewed in the worst possible light, it
has felt very lonely, and so a part of the
desire to tell my story is impart to reconnect with
humanity and to like hold on to the things that
are important.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And help them continue to live. So that's that's.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah. Well, I think a lot about reclamation for people,
especially people who get turned into characters in ways that
they you know, you can't put it back in the bottle.
Once it's out, whether it's true or not, you can't
get it back. And I over the years that you've
(06:18):
opened up your life, I've just been so taken aback
by things that I've learned. And it has been a
really interesting sort of experience to be both, you know,
a storyteller, which makes me really passionate about getting to
(06:41):
know people's real stories and to also know what it's
like to have been through the public machine in the
era in particular that we've been in it, so before
we before we get to where you are and how
(07:02):
this all began for you. If it's all right with you,
I'd actually like to rewind even farther. I think about
people I get to sit down and talk to, have
a story or a project or a series of those
things that people know normally from you know, your adult life.
And I love to ask people this question, and I
(07:24):
especially love to ask people with young kids this question,
because I feel like it adds something to it. I
always wonder if today we could, you know, jump into
back to the future, and you could go back and
interact with your young self at eight or nine, years old.
(07:44):
Are there things you would see in her that really
track for who you are today? Are there things you
would see maybe in her that remind you of your
own kid. I'm always I'm always curious if you if
you think like, oh, yeah, I see myself in her,
or I absolutely never well, especially maybe for you, I
(08:05):
would never have imagined what my life would be now.
I just wonder what connects.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, well, let's see eight year old me. Let's see,
that would have been third grade. So, and I mean,
I'm sure we don't have to be this specific, but
like in third grade, I was, you know, drawing, I
was doing a ton of drawing. I was playing. I
was doing gymnastics and soccer and softball. I was very athletic.
(08:34):
I was singing and dancing. I was a very silly kid.
I loved stories. So this this was back when I
was still in elementary school, and my mom worked at
my elementary school, which means that I would always get
to school early and stay late after all the kids
were gone. And so the school sort of got to
be my playground the entire thing, and I got to
(08:57):
just you know, make use of all the stationery, and
you know, so I was like while my mom was
grading paperwork, I was writing my own little stories, and
I was already a little author.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Like so so in many ways, I I'm very very
similar to that girl. Like that that girl has persisted
throughout this you know ship of theseus that has been
through quite the maelstrom, and I'm really grateful that that
(09:29):
is true, that I still remain a person who deep
down is very silly and and curious and and and compassionate.
I think that's something that I've always been is I've
always been aware of like people's energy around me, and
(09:50):
I've always been aware of, like who's the little outcast
in the room, and I'm going to hang out with them?
So that was something that I've always done. And I
think the thing that is different that is, you know,
noticeably different between me then and me now is fear
(10:17):
and sadness. I mean, I mean it's just is like
and you know, it's it's interesting with my four year
old daughter, who is remarkably similar to me, Like she
looks exactly like I looked when I was her age,
and I think the only thing that is super different
(10:40):
about her and me is that she likes spooky things
like she's she was, she's already like in love with
Jack Skellington and and you know, like all of those
kind of things, and like I was, I have never
been a scary movie kind of person, So I feel
like maybe.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I might be raising a goth by accident.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I don't don't know how. I know, like how that
genetically came out of my body, but like yeah, so
otherwise we're just like we're both very silly. We both
are like really happy to get into costume and get
into character. So that silliness and that like being drawn
(11:20):
to stories. Like just now, like I mentioned, I was
slightly late coming to the podcast because I was assisting
my daughter in the bathroom. But the way that I
assist her is every single time I go to the bathroom,
she wants me to tell her a story while she's
going to the bathroom, So I have to sit there
and tell her a story. And she's not going potty
until I'm done with the story. So it's like a
whole thing. And yeah, but like the one thing that
(11:44):
is different is that up until everything that happened to
me when I was twenty, I swear like nothing bad
had ever happened to me like it's it's true, and
I mean it's not to say that I had like
the perfect childhood on paper, right, like I had divorced
(12:07):
parents whatever, but I did not experience that negatively. I
got to have two Christmases and two birthdays, and my
parents lived within two blocks of each other, and so
it was very easy and very fluid for me to
move back and forth between those spaces. And it really
(12:27):
wasn't weird because my entire extended family lived within walking distance,
so it just felt natural to like, oh, I'm going
to go to my dad's house, I'm going to go
to my alma's house, I'm going to go to my house.
You know, Like all of these things were very fluid.
So I never experienced any of those what people think
about as like traditionally negative childhood experiences. Did not have
(12:50):
that for me. I never struggled in school, I never
struggled at sports. Everything came easy to me. I made
friends easily, and so I really grew up in this
like blessed experience, this really really lucky life where I
felt very loved, very supported, and everything came easy to me.
(13:15):
And so what that did is it it put me
in a position to be very very vulnerable when something
bad and not just a little bad, but very very
bad came my way because I was utterly unprepared for
how to deal with it, right, And then that feeling
(13:39):
of being utterly unprepared to deal with it like you
never you never like forget that feeling of like the
train just hitting you out of nowhere, and I think
for the rest of your life, you're a little twitchy
in a way that you never were before because you
(13:59):
got hit by a freaking train and that came out
of nowhere, and you if it happened once, it could
happen again. Like those those are the things that go
in my mind or like another big difference and this
this is going to sound like really freaking sad, and
it's something that I'm still trying to work through, is
(14:22):
because the really bad thing that happened to me was
not just like one bad thing.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
It was like a.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Prolonged series of bad things that kept just building on
each other and really took over my life.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I had to sit.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
For a very long time in suffering, like prolonged existential anguish,
and I weirdly became comfortable in it, like where as
before I would wake up, you know, everything is rainbows
(15:01):
and sunshine. Like now, I was waking up and everything
was a cloudy day, and that became like the new
comfortable normal.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Thing for me.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, And.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
When the bad circumstances go away, the cloudy weather doesn't like,
you know, like trying to get back to what you
were before doesn't really work. And so I'm better now
at like pushing those clouds up so that I get
(15:36):
a little more sunshine coming my way. Yeah, but like
there's something weirdly comforting to me about sadness because I
feel almost safer when I'm sad than when i'm happy,
because when I'm happy, I'm afraid that something bad is
going to happen to me. And that's that's where like
(15:59):
I'm still working through some PTSD response, because when everything
is going well and when I'm happy, that's when I
start feeling scared that something bad is going to happen
to me.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
We'll be back in just a minute after a few
words from our favorite sponsors. When I think about the
thing that felt like the train wreck for me in
my early twenties that was global and awful, I know
(16:34):
what you mean about what you get used to and
what I was thinking about when I was listening to
you speak and you were describing those PTSD symptoms before
you named the acronym, was when you experience that prolonged suffering,
(16:58):
you almost get used to being the frog in the
boiling water, and then it sort of seems like if
the water's hot all the time, it won't be such
a shock the next time it boils, right, you know,
And when you start to unlearn that, when you have
to do the work, as you said, to push the
clouds up. You know, I had, I had a train wreck,
(17:22):
and then twenty years later it felt like I had
another one. And the thing that was really tough for
me about it was being in a place doing the
recovery once my PTSD was diagnosed, and feeling like i'd
really begun to turn the water temperature down a lot,
(17:44):
and then it boiled, and I was like fuck, because
if maybe, if I had just maybe, if i'd just
let it stay hot, this wouldn't feel so bad. But
that's no way to live a life. And so I
share that with you just because I really want you
to know how much I mean, like, oh my god,
(18:05):
I feel it in my bones. I feel for you
and I know what you mean when you say you
don't really ever go back, because when you've been boiled,
you will never unknow the feeling ye exactly of the boiling.
It just doesn't work like that.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
No, and yeah, I do not relish the moment that
my daughter gets really hurt by something, because I mean,
I know that as a mom, I will be prepared.
I am more than prepared to help her figure that
out and process that. I don't love the fact that
(18:47):
as a mom that I can't just protect her from.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That forever right, that you can't stop it, I.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Can't stop it.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And then in the meantime, I'm just like relishing witnessing
my daughter experienced the world the way I know I
once experienced it, which was without pain, without that flinch reaction,
without that hyper vigilance, without that that sadness, that like
(19:14):
deep knowing sadness.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, and so.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I guess it's just like one of those weird un
you know, blessings of being a parent that I wasn't
really that's not what I signed up for. But it's
like something that has come back for me in a
karmic way. It's like you get to experience that again.
At least at least as a witness, and and I
really appreciate that because you know, when when you lose
(19:42):
your innocence that way, yeah, it's a real loss.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
It's a it's like a death.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
It is, it's and it and no one teaches you
how to mourn yourself. We we don't really have a
great practice who understand the death of part of yourself
in our society, And I think it. I think it's
(20:11):
something that increases pain in the world. And it's why
I'm so kind of winded in a good way by
people who do what you're doing. I recently was in
(20:33):
some community with Monica Lewinsky and we got to talk
about a lot of this.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Oh, she's a great person to talk to about it.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
I mean, just incredible. And I think I am so
grateful for all of the women in the world, in
our effective peer group who have just chosen to rescue themselves.
I think, you know, I try to put myself in
(21:03):
the place that I was at twenty. I was in college,
I just finished my junior year, I was getting ready
for my senior year, and then I booked my first
TV show and it was like being plucked and dropped
in a completely foreign universe totally. And you were twenty
when you went to study abroad in Italy, which I'm
(21:24):
sure felt like this joyous experience. You were like expanding
into the world. You were going to, you know, learn
this language you knew a little of.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Right, but not be immersed in a culture and just yeah,
like the idea of growing as a human being because
of just by virtue of being in this new environment
was absolutely part of the part of the excitement of it.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
What were you excited about, What were you studying at
the time, Why did you pick Italy? How did it begin? Well?
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I was always really interested in languages, in part because
I grew up again in this like in these divorced
households where there was a very different culture between what
was going on at my dad's house versus what was
going on at my mom's house. My mom was born
in Germany, and so on my mom's side of my
family we are very culturally German still to this day.
(22:21):
Like we don't sing, you know, English Christmas songs, We
sang German Christmas songs at Christmas time. So I grew
up at my mom's house eating hot Kohl and saukout
and Reladen, all of you know, Vechkin, all of that,
and then at my dad's house it was like hot
dogs and hamburger helper and he doesn't, you know, he's
(22:43):
never spoken a foreign language word in his life. So
it's it was interesting to like see how from a
very young age to really like understand in my in
my bones that there are different ways to exist in
the world and none of them is better than another.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They're just different.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
And it made me really curious about all of the
different ways that people are in the world. And so I,
you know, the first time I studied abroad was actually
in Japan. I was fourteen. It was during high school,
and I spent three weeks in Kyoto living with a
family there with who had a girl who was my age.
So I was like hanging out in her bedroom with her,
(23:24):
going to classes with her, you know, doing all that.
And it was such an incredible experience that left such
a positive impression upon me that I immediately knew that
I wanted to do that more. I wanted to study
abroad more. And the next natural opportunity was college. And
(23:45):
you know, when you're in college, they're like junior year
because then you've gotten enough credits in to like be
kind of an adult, but you're not on your way
out because you're not a senior. So like junior year
is the perfect year to study abroad, and that was
my plan and why Italy. Well, also when I was fourteen,
I went to Italy with my family and it was
(24:10):
when I think about like places that I want to
go in the world, I always there's like a criteria
that I think about. One is that I want there
to be amazing food. Two is that I want there
to be a culture shock three is that I want
there to be like beautiful nature, and four is I
(24:33):
want there to be beautiful history. And Italy ticked all
of those boxes.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
And as Italian, yes, I mean, come on, it's Italy,
are we kidding me? And so as somebody who is
like technically studying languages because I want to become a translator,
that's my excuse to my dad, Italy, like Italian is
not the most you know, effective language to learn. If
(25:02):
I really wanted to be becoming a professional translator and
get actual paid jobs, I would have been going for
Spanish or Chinese or something like that.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
But no, I.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Really was just infatuated with Italy after having spent some
time there with my family. I actually had studied a
little bit of Latin back in middle school, and so
like I had read about like the Forum and you know,
all all of that, and so I just had this
like really idealistic vision of what Italy was going to
(25:34):
be in my mind. And I'll, you know, as soon
as I got there, it was it lived up to
my expectations. Like the few weeks that I was there
when everything was going great were some of the best
weeks of my life. Like there were some like some
moments of awkwardness in the transition, and but like, you know,
(25:57):
you chalk that up to being a young woman in
a foreign country who's figuring herself out, Like it's going
to be a little awkward, but nothing like bad. And
I had a great time and I met great people,
and yeah, I was really grateful.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
We'll be back in just a minute. But here's a
word from our sponsors. How long had you been there
when you came home and knew something was wrong? And
you know, paint that picture in any way that you
(26:36):
wish you or not, but you know, you call the
police expecting help. Yeah, and everything turns upside down? How
long had you been in the country.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
So I had been in Perusia for about five weeks,
so not very long at all. Still sort of getting
my bearings, still meeting people, still finding my rhythm. I
(27:07):
had just recently met a young computer engineering student. My
Italian stallion was this bespeckled point dexter named Rafaele Salachico.
I met him at a little classical music concert that
was at my school, and so it was everything was
(27:28):
still very brand new, feeling right, and yet you know,
coming home that morning, I had spent the night with
raphae La and I came home actually because I wanted
to get changed into something pretty. It was a holiday,
so we were planning. RAPHAELI was planning on taking me
(27:50):
out on this like romantic weekend out of town into
like the you know, the hills of Umbria. He wanted
to like treat me to truffles, which I had never
had before.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
You were like, I'm gonna live my under the Tuscan sun.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
This is sun life, and and so all my all
I was planning to do that morning was to just
go home really quickly, change into something like take a shower,
change into something pretty and then go back to his
place and go off on our little like romantic weekend.
That's where my head was at when I came home
(28:24):
and noticed that something was a miss. So first of all,
the front door was wide open, and it was sunny out,
but it wasn't like hot. This was November. This was
the beginning of November. So I was like, that's odd,
and I called out into the house. I was asking, like,
(28:46):
is anyone home? No one responded, so I thought, huh,
that's weird. And I didn't automatically jump to the conclusion
someone's been murdered in my house. I just was like, huh,
and it you know, I remembered that the latch to
the door was faulty, and so if you really wanted
to keep the door closed, you had to lock it
(29:06):
with a key, And so it occurred to me, well,
maybe when someone was leaving they forgot to lock you know,
the key all the way. Who knows, Like, maybe that's
what happened. So like I'm doing all of these processes
in my brain to go huh and then think what
could be the possible reason for that? Okay, fine, So
I had a series of those as I walked through
(29:28):
my house that morning, and again with the very limited
purpose of going and taking a shower, getting changed into
something pretty, and then leaving again. So the front door
is open, weird. I close it behind me, I lock
it behind me. I go and I get undressed. I
go into my bathroom and start brushing my teeth, you know,
getting ready to take a shower. And as I'm brushing
(29:50):
my teeth, I remember like spitting into the sink and
being like, huh, there were drops of blood in the sink.
Now again, my brain did not go someone's been murdered.
My brain went, oh uh. Well, first of all, I
was like, my are my gums bleeding?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
And then but I was like, no, it's not. It's
like I checked and it was old blood, like it
had dried. And I was like, oh, that's weird. So
then I thought, well, maybe someone cut themselves or maybe
someone had menstrul like blood and wash their hands. Like
I didn't know, Like it wasn't like a ton of blood.
I just thought that's weird. And then I tried to
come up with a reason for it, and then was
(30:30):
like okay, And then I got into the shower, took
a shower, got out of the shower, and as I
was stepping out onto the bath mat to you know,
dry myself off, I noticed more blood on the bath
mat and I thought, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Go to my room. I get dressed.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
I start blow drying my hair in a separate bathroom,
and I noticed that there is feces left in the toilet.
And that is when all of the different things that
I noticed sort of like smashed together, as I, holy shit,
something's wrong because all of those things, like I could
come up with little excuses for all of the things
(31:10):
up to that moment, but like feces being left in
the toilet, yeah, was very unlike my roommates, Like I
could not imagine any of them doing that. And it
was the first thing that made me think, Oh, no,
someone else has been in my house.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
In the house, yeah, you got the feeling.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I got the like creepy feeling, and I was like,
oh my god, is someone in the house right now?
And so I immediately left and I went back to Rafeli's
house and I asked him, like I told him all
about this, and I was like this, do I sound
like I'm overreacting? Like something feels off? And he was like, well,
if you're feeling unsure, you should just call your roommates
and figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And so I did.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
I tried calling my roommates and only one of them
picked up. I had three roommates. I tried calling Meredith,
she didn't answer. I tried calling loud, she didn't answer.
I finally got a hold of Philamena. She said that
she hadn't been home that night, just like she had
been her boyfriend's, just like I had been at Mines.
And so like all of this like cascade of like, Okay,
(32:13):
trying to figure out what's going on. I'm going to
meet Philamina back at the house. We're going to investigate
this further. And when we do, we discover that I
actually go into her room. I had no reason to
go into her room before. So now I go into
her room and I see that the window has been broken,
and so someone has broken into our house, come in
through the window. And we're looking around and we're going,
(32:36):
this is so weird because our laptops are here, her
camera is there, like all of this stuff that's very
valuable and easy to steal has not been stolen. So
we're like, Okay, someone broke into our house, but to
use the bathroom, like.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
What is going on?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
And then yeah, like what is going on? So we
call the police and we and you know, and then
we assume that in calling the police, like we're gonna
get some help, We're gonna care what's going on. We're
still trying to get hold of our other roommates.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
We can't.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
We notice that Laura's room or Louda's room is like
completely fine, completely untouched. No one has even been in
her room. And then we try to check merediths and
her door is locked, and we're like, what is going on?
And we start thinking like is Meredith in her room?
Is she like has she locked the door?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Like why is she scared?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Is she scared? Like what is going on?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
We're trying and trying to get a hold of her,
and then finally someone breaks down her door and we see,
well they see I did not actually see. I was
not the one who broke down the door, and it
was all the way down a hallway, so like I
didn't see into the room.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Thank god.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
I've never actually like saw her body in person. But
as soon as it was I think Philamena's boyfriend broke
in the door, everyone started screaming, I mean yeah, and
all speaking in rapid fire Italian, and by then like
(34:15):
a few police officers that arrived, and so they're like,
get out of the house, get out of the house.
And so I'm sitting there trying to figure out what
it is they even saw in Meredith's room. And and
this is like the first sort of getting hit by
a train moment, because it's like I didn't know what
was going on. I didn't actually see what they saw
in the room, but they're clearly freaking out. So something
(34:38):
really bad is in that room. I don't know if
it's the person who broke into our house, Like a
part of me was wondering maybe a person broke into
our house but cut themselves, and then like is injured
in her room, Like I don't know, Like I just
don't know, and I keep like the last thing that
my brain wants to believe is that Meredith has been murdered.
(35:03):
And so I'm slow on the uptake of this completely
insane piece of information, which also happens to be the truth.
And then I spend the next several days in a
kind of limbo of shock and being at the you know,
(35:25):
at the mercy of police officers who are coming to
me and wanting me to just tell them anything I
can possibly know or remember about anyone who might have,
like you know, had something against Meredith, or anything that
I noticed when I first came home, because I was
the first one to come home. So like, I'm just
(35:47):
like downloading all of this information over and over and
over again, not realizing that I'm not just like roommate
number three in an episode of Law and Order now,
which is already surreal as it is, I'm actually suspect
number one, and I have no fucking clue.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Do you think that was because you were a foreigner
and because for whatever reason in the barrier of language
they first like, were they just suspicious that you'd taken
a shower?
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, So I've asked myself this question quite a lot,
and I think I got some clarity, some clarity after
having read my prosecutor's book and also spoken with him
extensively in person.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Wow, and the thing.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So there were a number of things that singled me
out compared to other people, in one of which was
that of all the other people who lived in the
house where Meredith lived, and there were two floors, so
there was our apartment, which was the upper floor, and
there was a downstairs floor and they weren't connected, so
it's not like you know, you know, they weren't connected.
(37:07):
But we were all in one house, right, So four
girls were living upstairs, four guys were living downstairs, and
you know, we hung out with each other. Meredith was
sort of kind of dating one of the guys downstairs.
So there was you know, access to the house was
available basically to all of the people who were there,
and the police, especially my prosecutor, from the very beginning,
(37:32):
believed that someone who had access to the house was
involved with the crime. And the reason they believed that
was because my prosecutor, who led the investigation, that's how
it works in Italy, he took one look at the
break in, like the broken window, you know, how this
(37:57):
person would have climbed into our house, and he said, no,
one would really do that. He didn't believe that someone
would break in through that particular window in our house,
and so he said that the break in was not real,
it was staged and only someone who had access to
the house would stage a break in, and from there
(38:21):
he logically deduced everything else. So if someone who lives
in the house is guilty. Who could it be, Well,
it couldn't be any of the guys who lived downstairs
because they were out of town with their families at
the time. It couldn't be. It couldn't have been Laura
(38:41):
because she was out of town in Rome at the time.
And again, like al they call it alib alibidi ferro,
an iron clad alibi. So that left That left Philomena,
and it left me, and we had the same alibi.
Basically we were at our boyfriend's house. But Philamina cried
(39:04):
more than me. Philomena was older than me and also
a law intern, so she got a lawyer very quickly.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I did not, God, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
There was some like mistranslation moments, like when I told
the police, Like someone asked me, does Meredith ever lock
her door? And I said she sometimes locks her door,
and Philamina was like, she never locks her door, and
why are you always saying she locks her door? And
(39:39):
I didn't say she always locks her door. I said
she sometimes locks her door. So there was just like
little moments of mistranslation where I think that me not
being a fluent speaker, me being an outsider, me being
and sort of deer in headlights came across as suspicious
to the police, and so so very very quickly, like
(40:02):
from day one, they had their eyes on me. And
they deny this, They say that they did not fixate
on me. But it's hard for me to believe because
of every single person who lived in that house, the
only person who they tapped her phone from the very
beginning was me, right, So I was clearly of special interest.
(40:26):
I was questioned far more than anyone else who knew Meredith,
who lived in the house anything, And so from the
very beginning, the police thought that I was involved.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Somehow, I just can't imagine the both the sense of
impending doom and also the naivete knowing you weren't there
that the doom could be impending.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah, I had no idea that there was doom impending.
I m not.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And you know, I mean, I mean, listen, anyone who
wasn't living under a rock knows what happens. You were
arrested for her murder. You know, you were convicted of
her murder, despite the fact that from the beginning there
were investigators pointing out that there was not evidence, that
there was nothing to tie you to this and I
(41:23):
will say I remember at the time hearing about you
and the boyfriend, and maybe it was a whole like
polyamorous thing, and they really tried to make it seem
scandalous and sexual, and and I my heart hurts for
(41:45):
you because they put you in that fem fatale like
evil woman archetype.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
It was like a Tarantino film, but with me and
my name in my face.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
It was really bad.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
This conversation is so immensely powerful to me, and I
have so many more questions to ask Amanda, so she
is graciously going to stick around so we can finish
this up in part two.
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello Whipsmarties.
Today we are joined by a guest that has fascinated
(00:21):
me for nearly twenty years and likewise the world. Today's
guest is none other than Amanda Knox. You likely know
Amanda as an American author, an activist, a journalist. You
might know her as a woman who was wrongfully convicted
in college for the murder of her roommate in Italy
(00:43):
in a year that she was studying abroad. And after
that wrongful conviction in two thousand and seven, she spent
four years behind bars, eventually having her conviction overturned when
the man who murdered her roommate was sentenced. The powerful
thing about Amanda's story is not only that she became
(01:03):
a casualty of an unjust justice system, but that she
became fodder for a media machine that didn't care about
the truth. They cared about scandal and paper sales and
salacious stories that they knew would clickbait around the world.
And this young girl's life was turned upside down in
(01:26):
a way that has had lasting and permanent effects in
some circles. Through her prolonged legal process and her advocacy
for other women behind bars, Amanda began to find purpose
again and eventually that purpose led to the passion of advocacy.
She has become a best selling author. She has become
(01:48):
a journalist. Her first book was titled Waiting to Be Heard,
a memoir. In twenty eighteen, she chose to shed light
on stories like hers hosting The Scarlet Letter Report, a
television series that examines the incredibly toxic nature of the
way that we publicly shame women in particular. And her
(02:10):
second memoir, released this year, is titled Free My Search
for Meaning. It is an absolutely stunning book that affected
me so deeply, and now we are on the precipice
of her life story being turned into a show. It'll
be hitting Hulu on August twentieth, titled The Twisted Tale
(02:31):
of Amanda Knox, and Amanda served as executive producer alongside
another woman who knows what it's like to be turned
into media fodder, Monica Lewinsky. Amanda's going to join us
today to talk about her journey, how she's learned to heal,
what it means to stand up for others, and what
(02:52):
it means to reclaim her story. Let's dive in with
Amanda Knox. Amanda, I am so just thrilled, elated, excited
(03:13):
to have you on the show today. Thank you so
much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Oh well, thank you for having me. I'm excited as well.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, I think about you a lot, which probably sounds
a bit odd, but interestingly, there have been certain touch
points in my life as a woman who very quickly
was in the public I at twenty one. Who you know,
(03:41):
my first show started in two thousand and three. Your
life obviously exploded into public consciousness in two thousand and seven.
The Internet and the forums and the chat rooms and
things where their Facebook was their social media wasn't yet.
But we have both in our sort of peer group,
(04:05):
experienced cycles of becoming something for others that maybe doesn't
feel true for us totally. And what's been so interesting
to me about certain people who have tracked through hearing
about their experiences and going, oh, wow, someday I want
(04:26):
to like have a glass of wine with that person
and talk about it. You know, things you've shared more
recently and in your second book and the frankness with
which you've talked about your experiences have made me go like, oh,
definitely we need to hang at some point.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So let's put it on the calendar.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Oh, I was like, I got to get her on
the show, and then I also have to ask her
like out for a meal. So anyway, I just wanted
you to know the way I kind of think about
what you do in the world, with your life and
your circumstances, and I really admire you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Oh well, thank you very much. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I know that I still tend to be a rather
controversial figure in some people's minds. So I'm really I'm
really thrilled that the messages that I'm putting out there
and the way that I tell my story has resonated
with you, because that's really the goal is like, after
being really like ostracized and elevated onto this pedestal but
(05:34):
only to be viewed in the worst possible light, it
has felt very lonely, and so a part of the
desire to tell my story is impart to reconnect with
humanity and to like hold on to the things that
are important.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And help them continue to live. So that's that's.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah. Well, I think a lot about reclamation for people,
especially people who get turned into characters in ways that
they you know, you can't put it back in the bottle.
Once it's out, whether it's true or not, you can't
get it back. And I over the years that you've
(06:18):
opened up your life, I've just been so taken aback
by things that I've learned. And it has been a
really interesting sort of experience to be both, you know,
a storyteller, which makes me really passionate about getting to
(06:41):
know people's real stories and to also know what it's
like to have been through the public machine in the
era in particular that we've been in it, so before
we before we get to where you are and how
(07:02):
this all began for you. If it's all right with you,
I'd actually like to rewind even farther. I think about
people I get to sit down and talk to, have
a story or a project or a series of those
things that people know normally from you know, your adult life.
And I love to ask people this question, and I
(07:24):
especially love to ask people with young kids this question,
because I feel like it adds something to it. I
always wonder if today we could, you know, jump into
back to the future, and you could go back and
interact with your young self at eight or nine, years old.
(07:44):
Are there things you would see in her that really
track for who you are today? Are there things you
would see maybe in her that remind you of your
own kid. I'm always I'm always curious if you if
you think like, oh, yeah, I see myself in her,
or I absolutely never well, especially maybe for you, I
(08:05):
would never have imagined what my life would be now.
I just wonder what connects.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, well, let's see eight year old me. Let's see,
that would have been third grade. So, and I mean,
I'm sure we don't have to be this specific, but
like in third grade, I was, you know, drawing, I
was doing a ton of drawing. I was playing. I
was doing gymnastics and soccer and softball. I was very athletic.
(08:34):
I was singing and dancing. I was a very silly kid.
I loved stories. So this this was back when I
was still in elementary school, and my mom worked at
my elementary school, which means that I would always get
to school early and stay late after all the kids
were gone. And so the school sort of got to
be my playground the entire thing, and I got to
(08:57):
just you know, make use of all the stationery, and
you know, so I was like while my mom was
grading paperwork, I was writing my own little stories, and
I was already a little author.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Like so so in many ways, I I'm very very
similar to that girl. Like that that girl has persisted
throughout this you know ship of theseus that has been
through quite the maelstrom, and I'm really grateful that that
(09:29):
is true, that I still remain a person who deep
down is very silly and and curious and and and compassionate.
I think that's something that I've always been is I've
always been aware of like people's energy around me, and
(09:50):
I've always been aware of, like who's the little outcast
in the room, and I'm going to hang out with them?
So that was something that I've always done. And I
think the thing that is different that is, you know,
noticeably different between me then and me now is fear
(10:17):
and sadness. I mean, I mean it's just is like
and you know, it's it's interesting with my four year
old daughter, who is remarkably similar to me, Like she
looks exactly like I looked when I was her age,
and I think the only thing that is super different
(10:40):
about her and me is that she likes spooky things
like she's she was, she's already like in love with
Jack Skellington and and you know, like all of those
kind of things, and like I was, I have never
been a scary movie kind of person, So I feel
like maybe.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I might be raising a goth by accident.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I don't don't know how. I know, like how that
genetically came out of my body, but like yeah, so
otherwise we're just like we're both very silly. We both
are like really happy to get into costume and get
into character. So that silliness and that like being drawn
(11:20):
to stories. Like just now, like I mentioned, I was
slightly late coming to the podcast because I was assisting
my daughter in the bathroom. But the way that I
assist her is every single time I go to the bathroom,
she wants me to tell her a story while she's
going to the bathroom, So I have to sit there
and tell her a story. And she's not going potty
until I'm done with the story. So it's like a
whole thing. And yeah, but like the one thing that
(11:44):
is different is that up until everything that happened to
me when I was twenty, I swear like nothing bad
had ever happened to me like it's it's true, and
I mean it's not to say that I had like
the perfect childhood on paper, right, like I had divorced
(12:07):
parents whatever, but I did not experience that negatively. I
got to have two Christmases and two birthdays, and my
parents lived within two blocks of each other, and so
it was very easy and very fluid for me to
move back and forth between those spaces. And it really
(12:27):
wasn't weird because my entire extended family lived within walking distance,
so it just felt natural to like, oh, I'm going
to go to my dad's house, I'm going to go
to my alma's house, I'm going to go to my house.
You know, Like all of these things were very fluid.
So I never experienced any of those what people think
about as like traditionally negative childhood experiences. Did not have
(12:50):
that for me. I never struggled in school, I never
struggled at sports. Everything came easy to me. I made
friends easily, and so I really grew up in this
like blessed experience, this really really lucky life where I
felt very loved, very supported, and everything came easy to me.
(13:15):
And so what that did is it it put me
in a position to be very very vulnerable when something
bad and not just a little bad, but very very
bad came my way because I was utterly unprepared for
how to deal with it, right, And then that feeling
(13:39):
of being utterly unprepared to deal with it like you
never you never like forget that feeling of like the
train just hitting you out of nowhere, and I think
for the rest of your life, you're a little twitchy
in a way that you never were before because you
(13:59):
got hit by a freaking train and that came out
of nowhere, and you if it happened once, it could
happen again. Like those those are the things that go
in my mind or like another big difference and this
this is going to sound like really freaking sad, and
it's something that I'm still trying to work through, is
(14:22):
because the really bad thing that happened to me was
not just like one bad thing.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
It was like a.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Prolonged series of bad things that kept just building on
each other and really took over my life.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I had to sit.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
For a very long time in suffering, like prolonged existential anguish,
and I weirdly became comfortable in it, like where as
before I would wake up, you know, everything is rainbows
(15:01):
and sunshine. Like now, I was waking up and everything
was a cloudy day, and that became like the new
comfortable normal.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Thing for me.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, And.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
When the bad circumstances go away, the cloudy weather doesn't like,
you know, like trying to get back to what you
were before doesn't really work. And so I'm better now
at like pushing those clouds up so that I get
(15:36):
a little more sunshine coming my way. Yeah, but like
there's something weirdly comforting to me about sadness because I
feel almost safer when I'm sad than when i'm happy,
because when I'm happy, I'm afraid that something bad is
going to happen to me. And that's that's where like
(15:59):
I'm still working through some PTSD response, because when everything
is going well and when I'm happy, that's when I
start feeling scared that something bad is going to happen
to me.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
We'll be back in just a minute after a few
words from our favorite sponsors. When I think about the
thing that felt like the train wreck for me in
my early twenties that was global and awful, I know
(16:34):
what you mean about what you get used to and
what I was thinking about when I was listening to
you speak and you were describing those PTSD symptoms before
you named the acronym, was when you experience that prolonged suffering,
(16:58):
you almost get used to being the frog in the
boiling water, and then it sort of seems like if
the water's hot all the time, it won't be such
a shock the next time it boils, right, you know,
And when you start to unlearn that, when you have
to do the work, as you said, to push the
clouds up. You know, I had, I had a train wreck,
(17:22):
and then twenty years later it felt like I had
another one. And the thing that was really tough for
me about it was being in a place doing the
recovery once my PTSD was diagnosed, and feeling like i'd
really begun to turn the water temperature down a lot,
(17:44):
and then it boiled, and I was like fuck, because
if maybe, if I had just maybe, if i'd just
let it stay hot, this wouldn't feel so bad. But
that's no way to live a life. And so I
share that with you just because I really want you
to know how much I mean, like, oh my god,
(18:05):
I feel it in my bones. I feel for you
and I know what you mean when you say you
don't really ever go back, because when you've been boiled,
you will never unknow the feeling ye exactly of the boiling.
It just doesn't work like that.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
No, and yeah, I do not relish the moment that
my daughter gets really hurt by something, because I mean,
I know that as a mom, I will be prepared.
I am more than prepared to help her figure that
out and process that. I don't love the fact that
(18:47):
as a mom that I can't just protect her from.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That forever right, that you can't stop it, I.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Can't stop it.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And then in the meantime, I'm just like relishing witnessing
my daughter experienced the world the way I know I
once experienced it, which was without pain, without that flinch reaction,
without that hyper vigilance, without that that sadness, that like
(19:14):
deep knowing sadness.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, and so.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I guess it's just like one of those weird un
you know, blessings of being a parent that I wasn't
really that's not what I signed up for. But it's
like something that has come back for me in a
karmic way. It's like you get to experience that again.
At least at least as a witness, and and I
really appreciate that because you know, when when you lose
(19:42):
your innocence that way, yeah, it's a real loss.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
It's a it's like a death.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
It is, it's and it and no one teaches you
how to mourn yourself. We we don't really have a
great practice who understand the death of part of yourself
in our society, And I think it. I think it's
(20:11):
something that increases pain in the world. And it's why
I'm so kind of winded in a good way by
people who do what you're doing. I recently was in
(20:33):
some community with Monica Lewinsky and we got to talk
about a lot of this.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Oh, she's a great person to talk to about it.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
I mean, just incredible. And I think I am so
grateful for all of the women in the world, in
our effective peer group who have just chosen to rescue themselves.
I think, you know, I try to put myself in
(21:03):
the place that I was at twenty. I was in college,
I just finished my junior year, I was getting ready
for my senior year, and then I booked my first
TV show and it was like being plucked and dropped
in a completely foreign universe totally. And you were twenty
when you went to study abroad in Italy, which I'm
(21:24):
sure felt like this joyous experience. You were like expanding
into the world. You were going to, you know, learn
this language you knew a little of.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Right, but not be immersed in a culture and just yeah,
like the idea of growing as a human being because
of just by virtue of being in this new environment
was absolutely part of the part of the excitement of it.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
What were you excited about, What were you studying at
the time, Why did you pick Italy? How did it begin? Well?
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I was always really interested in languages, in part because
I grew up again in this like in these divorced
households where there was a very different culture between what
was going on at my dad's house versus what was
going on at my mom's house. My mom was born
in Germany, and so on my mom's side of my
family we are very culturally German still to this day.
(22:21):
Like we don't sing, you know, English Christmas songs, We
sang German Christmas songs at Christmas time. So I grew
up at my mom's house eating hot Kohl and saukout
and Reladen, all of you know, Vechkin, all of that,
and then at my dad's house it was like hot
dogs and hamburger helper and he doesn't, you know, he's
(22:43):
never spoken a foreign language word in his life. So
it's it was interesting to like see how from a
very young age to really like understand in my in
my bones that there are different ways to exist in
the world and none of them is better than another.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
They're just different.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
And it made me really curious about all of the
different ways that people are in the world. And so I,
you know, the first time I studied abroad was actually
in Japan. I was fourteen. It was during high school,
and I spent three weeks in Kyoto living with a
family there with who had a girl who was my age.
So I was like hanging out in her bedroom with her,
(23:24):
going to classes with her, you know, doing all that.
And it was such an incredible experience that left such
a positive impression upon me that I immediately knew that
I wanted to do that more. I wanted to study
abroad more. And the next natural opportunity was college. And
(23:45):
you know, when you're in college, they're like junior year
because then you've gotten enough credits in to like be
kind of an adult, but you're not on your way
out because you're not a senior. So like junior year
is the perfect year to study abroad, and that was
my plan and why Italy. Well, also when I was fourteen,
I went to Italy with my family and it was
(24:10):
when I think about like places that I want to
go in the world, I always there's like a criteria
that I think about. One is that I want there
to be amazing food. Two is that I want there
to be a culture shock three is that I want
there to be like beautiful nature, and four is I
(24:33):
want there to be beautiful history. And Italy ticked all
of those boxes.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
And as Italian, yes, I mean, come on, it's Italy,
are we kidding me? And so as somebody who is
like technically studying languages because I want to become a translator,
that's my excuse to my dad, Italy, like Italian is
not the most you know, effective language to learn. If
(25:02):
I really wanted to be becoming a professional translator and
get actual paid jobs, I would have been going for
Spanish or Chinese or something like that.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
But no, I.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Really was just infatuated with Italy after having spent some
time there with my family. I actually had studied a
little bit of Latin back in middle school, and so
like I had read about like the Forum and you know,
all all of that, and so I just had this
like really idealistic vision of what Italy was going to
(25:34):
be in my mind. And I'll, you know, as soon
as I got there, it was it lived up to
my expectations. Like the few weeks that I was there
when everything was going great were some of the best
weeks of my life. Like there were some like some
moments of awkwardness in the transition, and but like, you know,
(25:57):
you chalk that up to being a young woman in
a foreign country who's figuring herself out, Like it's going
to be a little awkward, but nothing like bad. And
I had a great time and I met great people,
and yeah, I was really grateful.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
We'll be back in just a minute. But here's a
word from our sponsors. How long had you been there
when you came home and knew something was wrong? And
you know, paint that picture in any way that you
(26:36):
wish you or not, but you know, you call the
police expecting help. Yeah, and everything turns upside down? How
long had you been in the country.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
So I had been in Perusia for about five weeks,
so not very long at all. Still sort of getting
my bearings, still meeting people, still finding my rhythm. I
(27:07):
had just recently met a young computer engineering student. My
Italian stallion was this bespeckled point dexter named Rafaele Salachico.
I met him at a little classical music concert that
was at my school, and so it was everything was
(27:28):
still very brand new, feeling right, and yet you know,
coming home that morning, I had spent the night with
raphae La and I came home actually because I wanted
to get changed into something pretty. It was a holiday,
so we were planning. RAPHAELI was planning on taking me
(27:50):
out on this like romantic weekend out of town into
like the you know, the hills of Umbria. He wanted
to like treat me to truffles, which I had never
had before.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
You were like, I'm gonna live my under the Tuscan sun.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
This is sun life, and and so all my all
I was planning to do that morning was to just
go home really quickly, change into something like take a shower,
change into something pretty and then go back to his
place and go off on our little like romantic weekend.
That's where my head was at when I came home
(28:24):
and noticed that something was a miss. So first of all,
the front door was wide open, and it was sunny out,
but it wasn't like hot. This was November. This was
the beginning of November. So I was like, that's odd,
and I called out into the house. I was asking, like,
(28:46):
is anyone home? No one responded, so I thought, huh,
that's weird. And I didn't automatically jump to the conclusion
someone's been murdered in my house. I just was like, huh,
and it you know, I remembered that the latch to
the door was faulty, and so if you really wanted
to keep the door closed, you had to lock it
(29:06):
with a key, And so it occurred to me, well,
maybe when someone was leaving they forgot to lock you know,
the key all the way. Who knows, Like, maybe that's
what happened. So like I'm doing all of these processes
in my brain to go huh and then think what
could be the possible reason for that? Okay, fine, So
I had a series of those as I walked through
(29:28):
my house that morning, and again with the very limited
purpose of going and taking a shower, getting changed into
something pretty, and then leaving again. So the front door
is open, weird. I close it behind me, I lock
it behind me. I go and I get undressed. I
go into my bathroom and start brushing my teeth, you know,
getting ready to take a shower. And as I'm brushing
(29:50):
my teeth, I remember like spitting into the sink and
being like, huh, there were drops of blood in the sink.
Now again, my brain did not go someone's been murdered.
My brain went, oh uh. Well, first of all, I
was like, my are my gums bleeding?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
And then but I was like, no, it's not. It's
like I checked and it was old blood, like it
had dried. And I was like, oh, that's weird. So
then I thought, well, maybe someone cut themselves or maybe
someone had menstrul like blood and wash their hands. Like
I didn't know, Like it wasn't like a ton of blood.
I just thought that's weird. And then I tried to
come up with a reason for it, and then was
(30:30):
like okay, And then I got into the shower, took
a shower, got out of the shower, and as I
was stepping out onto the bath mat to you know,
dry myself off, I noticed more blood on the bath
mat and I thought, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Go to my room. I get dressed.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
I start blow drying my hair in a separate bathroom,
and I noticed that there is feces left in the toilet.
And that is when all of the different things that
I noticed sort of like smashed together, as I, holy shit,
something's wrong because all of those things, like I could
come up with little excuses for all of the things
(31:10):
up to that moment, but like feces being left in
the toilet, yeah, was very unlike my roommates, Like I
could not imagine any of them doing that. And it
was the first thing that made me think, Oh, no,
someone else has been in my house.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
In the house, yeah, you got the feeling.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I got the like creepy feeling, and I was like,
oh my god, is someone in the house right now?
And so I immediately left and I went back to Rafeli's
house and I asked him, like I told him all
about this, and I was like this, do I sound
like I'm overreacting? Like something feels off? And he was like, well,
if you're feeling unsure, you should just call your roommates
and figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And so I did.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
I tried calling my roommates and only one of them
picked up. I had three roommates. I tried calling Meredith,
she didn't answer. I tried calling loud, she didn't answer.
I finally got a hold of Philamena. She said that
she hadn't been home that night, just like she had
been her boyfriend's, just like I had been at Mines.
And so like all of this like cascade of like, Okay,
(32:13):
trying to figure out what's going on. I'm going to
meet Philamina back at the house. We're going to investigate
this further. And when we do, we discover that I
actually go into her room. I had no reason to
go into her room before. So now I go into
her room and I see that the window has been broken,
and so someone has broken into our house, come in
through the window. And we're looking around and we're going,
(32:36):
this is so weird because our laptops are here, her
camera is there, like all of this stuff that's very
valuable and easy to steal has not been stolen. So
we're like, Okay, someone broke into our house, but to
use the bathroom, like.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
What is going on?
Speaker 3 (32:55):
And then yeah, like what is going on? So we
call the police and we and you know, and then
we assume that in calling the police, like we're gonna
get some help, We're gonna care what's going on. We're
still trying to get hold of our other roommates.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
We can't.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
We notice that Laura's room or Louda's room is like
completely fine, completely untouched. No one has even been in
her room. And then we try to check merediths and
her door is locked, and we're like, what is going on?
And we start thinking like is Meredith in her room?
Is she like has she locked the door?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Like why is she scared?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Is she scared? Like what is going on?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
We're trying and trying to get a hold of her,
and then finally someone breaks down her door and we see,
well they see I did not actually see. I was
not the one who broke down the door, and it
was all the way down a hallway, so like I
didn't see into the room.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Thank god.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
I've never actually like saw her body in person. But
as soon as it was I think Philamena's boyfriend broke
in the door, everyone started screaming, I mean yeah, and
all speaking in rapid fire Italian, and by then like
(34:15):
a few police officers that arrived, and so they're like,
get out of the house, get out of the house.
And so I'm sitting there trying to figure out what
it is they even saw in Meredith's room. And and
this is like the first sort of getting hit by
a train moment, because it's like I didn't know what
was going on. I didn't actually see what they saw
in the room, but they're clearly freaking out. So something
(34:38):
really bad is in that room. I don't know if
it's the person who broke into our house, Like a
part of me was wondering maybe a person broke into
our house but cut themselves, and then like is injured
in her room, Like I don't know, Like I just
don't know, and I keep like the last thing that
my brain wants to believe is that Meredith has been murdered.
(35:03):
And so I'm slow on the uptake of this completely
insane piece of information, which also happens to be the truth.
And then I spend the next several days in a
kind of limbo of shock and being at the you know,
(35:25):
at the mercy of police officers who are coming to
me and wanting me to just tell them anything I
can possibly know or remember about anyone who might have,
like you know, had something against Meredith, or anything that
I noticed when I first came home, because I was
the first one to come home. So like, I'm just
(35:47):
like downloading all of this information over and over and
over again, not realizing that I'm not just like roommate
number three in an episode of Law and Order now,
which is already surreal as it is, I'm actually suspect
number one, and I have no fucking clue.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Do you think that was because you were a foreigner
and because for whatever reason in the barrier of language
they first like, were they just suspicious that you'd taken
a shower?
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, So I've asked myself this question quite a lot,
and I think I got some clarity, some clarity after
having read my prosecutor's book and also spoken with him
extensively in person.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Wow, and the thing.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So there were a number of things that singled me
out compared to other people, in one of which was
that of all the other people who lived in the
house where Meredith lived, and there were two floors, so
there was our apartment, which was the upper floor, and
there was a downstairs floor and they weren't connected, so
it's not like you know, you know, they weren't connected.
(37:07):
But we were all in one house, right, So four
girls were living upstairs, four guys were living downstairs, and
you know, we hung out with each other. Meredith was
sort of kind of dating one of the guys downstairs.
So there was you know, access to the house was
available basically to all of the people who were there,
and the police, especially my prosecutor, from the very beginning,
(37:32):
believed that someone who had access to the house was
involved with the crime. And the reason they believed that
was because my prosecutor, who led the investigation, that's how
it works in Italy, he took one look at the
break in, like the broken window, you know, how this
(37:57):
person would have climbed into our house, and he said, no,
one would really do that. He didn't believe that someone
would break in through that particular window in our house,
and so he said that the break in was not real,
it was staged and only someone who had access to
the house would stage a break in, and from there
(38:21):
he logically deduced everything else. So if someone who lives
in the house is guilty. Who could it be, Well,
it couldn't be any of the guys who lived downstairs
because they were out of town with their families at
the time. It couldn't be. It couldn't have been Laura
(38:41):
because she was out of town in Rome at the time.
And again, like al they call it alib alibidi ferro,
an iron clad alibi. So that left That left Philomena,
and it left me, and we had the same alibi.
Basically we were at our boyfriend's house. But Philamina cried
(39:04):
more than me. Philomena was older than me and also
a law intern, so she got a lawyer very quickly.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I did not, God, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
There was some like mistranslation moments, like when I told
the police, Like someone asked me, does Meredith ever lock
her door? And I said she sometimes locks her door,
and Philamina was like, she never locks her door, and
why are you always saying she locks her door? And
(39:39):
I didn't say she always locks her door. I said
she sometimes locks her door. So there was just like
little moments of mistranslation where I think that me not
being a fluent speaker, me being an outsider, me being
and sort of deer in headlights came across as suspicious
to the police, and so so very very quickly, like
(40:02):
from day one, they had their eyes on me. And
they deny this, They say that they did not fixate
on me. But it's hard for me to believe because
of every single person who lived in that house, the
only person who they tapped her phone from the very
beginning was me, right, So I was clearly of special interest.
(40:26):
I was questioned far more than anyone else who knew Meredith,
who lived in the house anything, And so from the
very beginning, the police thought that I was involved.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Somehow, I just can't imagine the both the sense of
impending doom and also the naivete knowing you weren't there
that the doom could be impending.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah, I had no idea that there was doom impending.
I m not.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And you know, I mean, I mean, listen, anyone who
wasn't living under a rock knows what happens. You were
arrested for her murder. You know, you were convicted of
her murder, despite the fact that from the beginning there
were investigators pointing out that there was not evidence, that
there was nothing to tie you to this and I
(41:23):
will say I remember at the time hearing about you
and the boyfriend, and maybe it was a whole like
polyamorous thing, and they really tried to make it seem
scandalous and sexual, and and I my heart hurts for
(41:45):
you because they put you in that fem fatale like
evil woman archetype.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
It was like a Tarantino film, but with me and
my name in my face.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
It was really bad.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
This conversation is so immensely powerful to me, and I
have so many more questions to ask Amanda, so she
is graciously going to stick around so we can finish
this up in part two.
Host
Sophia Bush
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