October 4, 2025 • 50 mins
On a summer night in Italy in 2007, the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher shocked the world. Her American flatmate Amanda Knox, and her new boyfriend Raffaele, were instantly thrust into an international legal saga that spanned years.
For the first time ever, True Crime Conversations host Claire Murphy joins The Spill's Laura Brodnik for a can't-miss crossover that dissects the new Disney+ series, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Whether you're a true-crime devotee or an entertainment junkie, you need to hear this.
In this episode, we bring you the full forensic detail of the Amanda Knox case, including the vital piece of contamination that crumbled the prosecution's DNA evidence. We also analyse the dramatic new TV series that puts you inside Amanda’s mind, depicting the terrifying interrogation police failed to record.
Discover the unsettling truth about the unflushed poo, the "see you later" text police misinterpreted, and the psychological tricks used to coerce a false confession from an exhausted, non-Italian speaking student.
We explain why the show's creators believe that only a drama - not a documentary or a memoir - can truly clear a name that has been dragged through the mud for a decade, and clear up exactly how Monica Lewinsky got involved.
THE END BITS
True Crime Conversations is a must-listen for true crime fans. It explores the world’s most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. Host Claire Murphy takes you through the latest cases taking over the globe every Thursday. Follow the show here.
Content warning: This article contains graphic details of violence, assault and sexual assault. If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
Mamamia’s No Filter spoke exclusively to Amanda Knox - hear her own story here.
Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes.
CREDITS
Hosts: Claire Murphy and Laura Brodnik
Producers: Tahli Blackman and Monisha Iswaran
Audio Producer: Scott Stronach
Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I'm Laura Brodnik, host of the Spill, which is Mamma
Mia's daily entertainment and pop culture podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I'm Claire Murphy. I'm the host of True Crime Conversations,
which is our weekly true crime podcast, speaking to the
people who know the most about these crimes. Well, I
am the host when Gemma Bath is not on maternity leave,
and she will be returning, never fear.
But we know just how popular true crime is, whether
you listen to it on a podcast, whether you watch
it on your streaming service of choice. But what about
(00:43):
when crime meets drama? And that is what we are
talking about today.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yes, that is what we're here to discuss. So, we
are talking about the new Disney Plus series, The Twisted
Tale of Amanda Knox. And if you're listening to this
through the spill feed, we have heard all of your comment.
that you want more true crime series and you want
to kind of dissect the actors and the production, the
behind the scenes facts, but you also want to know
what happened in the real life case and where those
(01:09):
people are now and why these stories were chosen to
be told in a dramatic fashion. So we're going to
be deep diving into that in today's episode. So Claire,
as our true crime expert, you're gonna take us through
the Amanda Knox case and what happened from the beginning.
Because I think for a lot of people like myself,
I have such a memory of watching this unfold on
TV at the time, but there's so much more to
(01:31):
this case, I think, and it became a lot more
in depth than a lot of people realize.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, and if you got your information about this case
from the news media, then that may have actually twisted
the way you might see it or view it. So
we're gonna get to the bottom of that as well.
But I'll step you through where this all began.
OK, so first thing I need to warn you is
that this case spans years. So it went on for
a really long time. So bear with us, there's a
(01:58):
little bit to get through. It started off in September 2007,
that is when Meredith Kercher, who was a British student,
she was spending a year studying abroad in Italy, and
she moved into a share accommodation, which is the villa
at 7 Via della Pergola in Perugia. And then later
that same month, just 10 days later,
(02:18):
Amanda Knox, who was an American student doing the same thing,
spending a year in Italy, she moved into the same address.
So there are 4 young girls living in this small
apartment or small villa. There are some boys living in
the flat downstairs. So they all share this villa together.
On October 25, Amanda meets a young Italian boy called Raffaele. Now,
(02:38):
they met at a concert, they are immediately in love.
They do that honeymoon period where they
Spent literally every minute of every day together. She then
starts staying at his house, essentially every night. She has
a job, so she goes and works at a bar,
a local bar, and she is studying as well, so
she's doing that too, but essentially her and Raffaeli now
(02:59):
become inseparable.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes. And in the show, it was depicted they had
only been together about a week before the events of
Meredith's murder took place. And I, I saw a lot
of feedback from the show of people thinking that that
was added into the story for extra dramatic effect, or
Make their relationship look more like a whirlwind. But they actually,
isn't that correct? They only were together really for one
week before their whole world blew up with these accusations.
(03:21):
Absolutely
Speaker 2 (03:21):
true. So they literally spent a week together out in
the world as a new couple before they were thrown
into all of this drama. So, come November 1, so
sometime after 8:30 p.m., Meredith Kercher was murdered in the
villa she shares with her flatmates.
Amanda and Raffaele are at Raffaele's apartment, and the two
(03:44):
of them both switched their phone off that night around
the same time that Meredith is murdered. Now, Amanda explains
that she had been messaging with her boss. She was
maybe gonna go into work that night, and he messaged
her to say that she didn't have to come in.
And she was like, Great. This means I get to
spend more time with my brand new, very handsome young
(04:04):
man boyfriend in his apartment.
And so they watched a movie and they ate some
food and they smoked a joint together, and Raffaele had
also turned his phone off because he didn't want to
speak to his dad. He spoke to his dad every
night on the phone. He's like, No, I want the
two of us to just spend uninterrupted time together.
This is very important, because police see that as in
(04:26):
this day and age where technology is used so frequently
to track us, to find out where we are, to
marry up locations to potential crimes, that if you turn
your phone off, it almost looks like an admission of guilt,
that you have done something wrong. So that is part
of the case against them.
She also sends a message to her boss before turning
(04:46):
her phone off that says, Thanks, I'll see you later.
That is interpreted by police very differently, had they not
been Italian, if English had been their first language, we
say that all the time. See you later. It's part
of our vernacular, but in Italy, it's taken more literally,
Speaker 1 (05:04):
as if they had a plan.
To see each other later. And when we're watching the series,
you see Amanda trying to explain to the police that
it's just another form of saying goodbye and how quickly
that leads to her being implicated, because again, they're thinking
that she's making a plan to meet up with him. And,
and is he involved or did she leave the apartment.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And the fact that her boss is a certain nationality
also plays into this. We'll get to that in a second.
So, it's the next morning, Amanda's woken up, the night
before there'd been a spill or a leaking something at
Raffaele's house. She wants to go home, she needs to
get a mop cause he doesn't own one. Typical man.
And then she also wants to like have a shower
and just get changed, and she will later on explain
why she did that to Raffaele in a very beautiful,
(05:45):
lovely scene where she'd like, I just wanted to look
pretty for you and wear a dress. But so she
goes home and the front door is open.
Which is not unusual because the front door that they
had of this villa was a little bit dodgy. You
had to physically keylock it for it to stay shut.
And if you didn't do that, the wind would sometimes
just blow it open. So, Amanda's thinking, one of my
(06:05):
flatmates has just run down the street to grab something,
didn't think to key lock the door. It's blown open
by itself. So she steps inside. She walks through to
her own room, she goes to have a shower, she
steps out onto the bath mat and realizes there's some
blood on the bath mat.
She also notices a little bit of it on the
sink area too. Now, for anyone who's lived in a
(06:27):
share house full of women.
We know the blood sometimes is a part of our
day to day life. Was this menstrual blood? Did someone
cut themselves shaving? It's in the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
That's it. There's so many possibilities that it could be
so many people using that bathroom.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Exactly right. So she goes, Ooh, that's kind of gross,
but doesn't think that automatically jump to someone's been murdered
in the house. She does notice, though, that someone has
gone to the toilet. They have done a poo and
they haven't flushed it.
And that then is the first time she fully realizes
that something's not right. Which is interesting because if you
(07:03):
live in a house full of women, sometimes women can
be pretty gross, especially when it comes to menstrual blood,
but there are certain things that she knows her flatmates
just would not do, and that is leave an unflushed
poo in the toilet.
So she leaves, and she asks Raffaele to come back
to the house, and she's like, I don't understand what's happened.
(07:24):
She goes back inside, realizes that one of her other flatmates,
rooms has been broken into. So the window is broken
and there's glass on the ground. She's unsure if she's
been robbed because it's her flatmate's room, so she's not
sure if anything is missing, but she thinks someone has
maybe been in the house. And then when she goes
back past the bathroom,
It looks like the poo has been flushed. She doesn't
(07:44):
go in and have a look at it, but it
looks like it's been flushed, so she goes, Oh my God,
that person must have been in the house while I
was in the house. So she starts to really freak out.
Raffaele turns up and they have a look, and they
realize that Meredith, one of her flatmates, her door is locked.
They knock on it, they call her name, she doesn't answer,
they think she's not there.
But they're not sure what's going on. They call police,
(08:05):
but two officers do turn up, but they're not the
police they've actually called. Yes. And this is true. 2
of the fraud investigation police turn up because they have
found 2 mobile phones thrown into someone's back garden.
Now, they believe that the phones belong to one of
the other flatmates, not Meredith, but that is due to
(08:25):
a SIM card being shared amongst the girls. They actually
belong to Meredith, and so they've been taken from her
and thrown over the back fence of someone's property. So
these fraud cops turn up and they start to ask
them about the phones and they're like, Hang on, we
think someone's broken into our house. And so these guys
automatically become in charge of this crime scene.
They end up calling in investigators because when the other
(08:49):
flatmates come home, and they all realize that Meredith's door
is still locked, one of these guys kicks the door
open and finds a body. Now, Meredith,
Has been raped, she's had her throat cut. There is
blood everywhere. She's covered by her bedding. So you can
see in the crime scene photos that one of her
(09:11):
feet is sticking out, and you can see just the
top of her head, but there was a lot of blood.
And so that is when the homicide team is brought
in and they start to investigate.
Now, this is where we have to understand, watching the
twisted tale of Amanda Knox. This is told from Amanda's
(09:31):
perspective and not from the police's perspective.
The difference in the way that the Italian justice system
works is very different to, say, the American or the
Australian justice system. So the person who will be prosecuting
you in court is the same person who investigates the crime.
So Mignini, who is a real man, is a real character,
so he's a real person, the character in the show.
(09:53):
So he comes on board as like the lead investigator,
but he's also gonna be prosecuting this in court.
There is a detective who is also a real person,
a woman who takes an immediate dislike to Amanda. She's
one of the first to question her, and it's very
obvious that she distrusts Amanda's reaction to the crime.
(10:16):
And we can see this, it has been documented. Amanda
does stand outside with everybody else when the investigative team
comes in.
And she's with Raffaele, and you've got to remember they've
been together for days. They're still in the honeymoon period.
He's comforting her. She's like smiling and laughing with him,
and like, they're cuddling and kissing a little bit and
it all seems a little bit not right to the detectives.
(10:38):
They're like, if my flatmate, who I supposedly am quite
close to, even though we've only lived together for a
little while, if we are seeing it right, she's not
fazed by her roommate being brutally murdered in her home.
So, that is when things start to shift back to
the police station. They're all brought in for questioning. Meredith's friends,
(11:00):
the other roommates, Amanda and Raffaele, are questioned, and it
seems like at the beginning, they're already suspecting her. They
do ask her questions about her whereabouts, and they try
and find alibis. There is a lot because she's there
all day. And then it's noted that she's sitting in
Raffaele's lap in the waiting room in the police station.
(11:21):
And again, detectives are looking at this like this is
not the behavior of somebody whose friend has just been murdered.
Meredith's British friends are there, and they too are looking
at this thinking, why is she acting this way when
Meredith has just been brutally slain in their home that
they share together. So there's a lot of questions being
asked about why Amanda did not act a certain way
(11:42):
in the aftermath of Meredith's death.
And so then the questioning amps up a little bit
from detectives, and then they allow her to go home,
but it's already the next day almost, and she's exhausted,
and they tell her, You need to be back here
within a few hours. So she goes home, has a shower,
comes back again, doesn't go home, it's a crime scene,
she goes to Raffaele's has a shower, comes back. She's exhausted.
(12:04):
She has had very little sleep. She doesn't really know
what's going on.
And she's interrogated by police again and again and again.
And this is the interesting part of this whole thing
is that,
As I said, this drama series is told from Amanda's perspective.
What is also true is that police did not record
this interrogation. Yes. We will never know exactly what happened
(12:27):
in that room. There is no evidence to fall back on,
there is no video. Amanda at that time did not
speak great Italian. She's hearing all of this through an
interpreter at a time where she's tired, doesn't know what's
going on.
So her interpretation of it is that they essentially coerced
her into an admission of guilt. So this is a
(12:48):
little bit of what the interrogation sounds like from Amanda's
perspective in the twisted tale of Amanda Knox.
I don't remember
(13:22):
and brought him home and then he killed her.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Is that where you met Patrick.
I don't, you lying.
(13:46):
It was Patrick. It's interesting listening to that and knowing
how much of a hand Amanda Knox had in not
just the creation of the show and the behind the
scenes of production. She's an executive producer, but she also
gave so much information to the writers and almost guided
them step by step of how she wanted each scene
to play out.
How it came from her memory, and then she even
(14:06):
helped write some of the episodes. And it's like they're
looking back on this very specific moment of media attention,
like those moments where she and Raffaele are outside the
house and they're hugging, and that's the moment where in
the series and in real life, we know the police
kind of turned against them.
And both of them have looked back on that time,
and I think you can see it come through the series,
because we're hearing it from Amanda's point of view, is
(14:28):
that she was quite shell shocked. And so she was
being very physical towards him because that's how she deals
with trauma. And he was almost clocking how it looked
to people around them, but he later on said in
his own memoir that he wrote about the situation that
he thought it was too cold to be pushing her
away in that moment where she
was wanting to be very affectionate, wanting to sit in
(14:49):
his lap. It was like a comfort thing. And even
scenes where you see her doing like leading integration, like
she does the splits in the waiting room and all
that sort of stuff, that all really happened, but it's
all just like a fear response from her is what
she's saying. And as we get led into the interrogation,
it's really interesting because as you're saying, there's no film,
there's no video of that moment. Everyone who's in that
room has a different story. But the camera work
(15:12):
In the way that they shape it to the audience
is almost like you're supposed to see it so directly
through Amanda's eyes that like the camera frame keeps getting smaller,
the noises keep getting louder, they're getting repetitive. It's all
these kind of sensory tricks that laid over the mean
to each other, all these sensory tricks that are laid
over that are meant to almost like make you feel
as a viewer that you're being interrogated. So the idea
is like, your heart is supposed to start beating fast,
(15:34):
you're supposed to start getting in like a fight or
flight situation.
And so when she yells out Patrick's name at the end,
it's almost like this release of like wanting to know
the escape of how you're gonna wear that. Exactly, exactly,
because she's given them what they want in that moment.
So it's a really interesting twist of putting you in
Amanda's shoes. And I guess maybe that explains what happened
(15:55):
next if you're looking at the real crime. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (15:57):
so you heard there she says it was Patrick and
Patrick is her boss at the bar.
Patrick Lumumba, who is an African man who has immigrated
to Italy, and he's opened this bar. Police had found
a hair in Meredith Kercher's bedroom, which matched an African man.
There was a young black man living in the apartment downstairs,
(16:20):
and he was terrified to hear that there was a
hair that potentially linked him.
But then they found out that the person that Amanda
had texted, I'll see you later, which they took literally,
that man was also of African origin, and so for them,
puzzle pieces started to click into place.
Amanda had obviously organized to meet this man at some
(16:41):
stage that night, and that man has hair that matches
the one that's on the scene. So it all makes
sense to them. So, she tells them that Patrick did it,
and all of a sudden the interrogation stops. And as
we know now, and what you do learn about in
the drama series and the documentary too that
Amanda Knox has made about this is that is a
very well-known interrogation technique. It is one that police have
(17:02):
been using for a very long time, and we've seen
cases be overturned, like the Central Park Five, for example,
the same interrogation technique was used on them, and they
falsely confessed to a murder that they did not commit.
And so we've seen it happen before, where if you
just layer on the pressure and you get people to
think that maybe then remembering something wrong, and then you
(17:23):
plant a seed that potentially it happened this way, like,
maybe you did leave the apartment that night, maybe you
did meet with Patrick, maybe you did go back to
your apartment and then they start to make you believe
under
Stress and duress that you are wrong and they are right.
And so to stop it, all you can do is admit.
And so that is what we're seeing play out from
Amanda's perspective now. The detectives, they say that it did
(17:47):
not play out like that, that that interrogation did not
happen like that. Also, Amanda claims she was hit in
the head a couple of times during it, which they
say did not happen.
And they say that at no stage did they plant
a seed that it was Patrick. Like, that came from her.
They said that they did not do that. So, we
can't know what the truth is in amongst all of that. So,
moving on, it's now November 19, so it's 18 days since.
(18:11):
Meredith's murder, and police announced that there is actually a
new suspect. They've arrested Patrick, Amanda and Raffaeli at this stage,
and they realized that a man who had been arrested
a few days before Meredith's murder for breaking into a kindergarten, essentially,
That he is actually the suspect linked to Meredith's murder.
(18:32):
His name is Rudy Guedey. He is also an African
immigrant into Italy, and he had a rap sheet, robberies,
various crimes against women, like, so he really fit the MO.
So when they figured out that Rudy was their guy,
they had to let Patrick go because his alibi stood
up and was checked, and they did manage to find
(18:55):
Rudy Gade at a train station and they arrest him.
Now, Amanda and Raffaele at this stage think, OK, they've
finally found the murderer. They will let us go. No,
that is not what happens now. And in fact, police
ramp up their involvement, and they create a narrative that
there was some kind of sexual nature to the crime. Obviously,
(19:15):
Meredith was raped, so that was already where they were
being led.
But they believed that it was more than just a
man breaking in and raping Meredith, that Amanda and Raffaele
were playing some kind of game, and they wanted to
involve Meredith, and she didn't want to, and that's why
she was killed. They also had been collecting DNA from
(19:38):
the scene, and
This is what will bring them unstuck later on down
the track. They filmed the entire thing. They find DNA
of Meredith's on a knife that has both Amanda and
Raffaele's DNA on it. Also, it was at Raffaele's apartment.
They also find some of Raffaele's DNA on a bra
strap that looks to have been broken off in some
(19:58):
kind of scuffle.
But as we'll later find out, those two were then
eventually thrown out. So Rudy Guede asks for a separate trial,
and he's fast tracked. So with, before Amanda and Raffaele
even make it to court, he is found guilty, sent
to jail, and sentenced. So, like, he's over and done with.
So then later, Amanda and Raffaele go to trial, and
(20:21):
at this stage is when the media really.
Starts to sink its teeth into this story. Back in
the day, it was MySpace. They'd trolled through Amanda's MySpace
and found every picture that made her look even vaguely bad.
And they start referring to her by a nickname, Foxy Knoxy,
which sounds terrible, but it was actually a nickname given
to her when she was playing soccer as a child.
And they made her into this kind of vixen character
(20:43):
who obviously was doing this for some kind of sexual
gratification and then turned on Meredith in the moment. So
if we fast forward now to December 4, 2009,
The jury finds Amanda and Raffaeli guilty, which comes as
a real shock to everybody because the way that that
case was handled, the prosecutors didn't hand over a lot
(21:04):
of the evidence until very late. They didn't have a
chance to refute a lot of it. They were really
kind of flying by the seat of their pants at
a lot of these junctures of the trial, and they're
found guilty and they're sent off to prison.
And the two of them are so shell shocked, they
don't really know what to do. Amanda claims then that's
(21:24):
when she really started to research her own investigation, and
by this stage, she's becoming more fluent in Italian, so
she can read documentation better and she can understand the
processes a bit better.
But the media has really sunk its teeth into the
point where every little thing is being leaked of hers
to the press. So, for example, and this is true
(21:45):
in the drama, when she was admitted into prison, they
took a blood test and they falsely found her positive
for HIV. And she was told, basically, that's it, you
have HIV and, you know, in the early 2000s, we
didn't treat it as well as what we do in 2025.
It was a terrifying diagnosis then.
But she was kind of just told, Oh, yep, that's it.
And then to write a list of men that she
(22:06):
potentially had sexual contact with so that they can be contacted.
That list was then stolen from her cell and given
to the media to paint another picture of just how
immoral that this young American girl was. Eventually, there is
an appeal. So, 2011, they go back to court on appeal.
This is when the DNA evidence becomes crucial. So,
(22:29):
They watched the video of how the DNA collection process
was handled, and you can see in the investigation's own
video evidence that they handled it incorrectly. So just as
an example, that bra strap that we spoke about before,
in the first video evidence, we can see it's underneath
Meredith's pillow, and then by the next time that they
(22:50):
collect that evidence, it's on the floor under the corner
of a rug.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So it's been contaminated in the drama.
And there's a question of like, how much is it
being contaminated? And the person says, like, it doesn't actually
matter because the fact that it's been moved and handled
already makes that invisible
evidence. Exactly
Speaker 2 (23:06):
right. And you can see, and in the original trial,
they looked at that bra strap that obviously it had
been forcefully pulled apart and like the the prongs were
pulled apart. But really, what had happened is it's obviously
been stood on while it's on the floor, and you
can see that in the evidence between when you first
see it and when you second see it.
And then as far as the DNA on the knife
is concerned, there was so little trace evidence that they
(23:28):
had to override the DNA testing machine in order for
it to register. And they were questioned in court about that,
and they said, if you didn't override that machine, would
it have found trace DNA of all three of them,
and they said, probably not, of Meredith's DNA.
So, and also they found that the knife had been
transported in a box that had had other things in it,
(23:49):
so it was, it was poorly handled, so they were
acquitted after that. Amanda goes home to the US, Raffaele
attempts to get on with his life.
Amanda and Raffaele again, are brought to trial in Italy.
They decide to re-prosecute them. They are found guilty, the
next time around. Amanda does not return to Italy from
the US. Raffaele does eventually return to Italy to try
(24:12):
and defend himself, and then.
Then there is another appeal on that, and they do
then acquit them, and that's it. Case closed. So this
goes on for quite a few years. But as we
can see, there is a lot of truth in the drama,
the way that it's depicted, but also we can never know.
What exactly happened in some of these situations because it
(24:33):
is not documented. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (24:34):
so it's very much from her point of view and
her experience and and her take on it. So in
that case, it's not meant to be, I don't think,
watched as a factual program. It's more there to just
see it through her eyes. And for a lot of people,
they're coming to this story for nearly the first time
through this drama. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
And if you were, like I said, understanding it from
just media reports, the way that she was portrayed was interesting,
that she had become this kind of demon.
Girl, this American demon sexual deviant that they really painted
her as, and it was, it was widely believed in
the press that she was some kind of awful murderer
(25:09):
who was in it for sexual pleasure.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yes, that she was like a sex crazed maniac. And
to be honest, like I do understand, I mean, I
don't understand of obviously the, the horrific side of this,
of like taking a murder investigation and and demonizing someone
who at that stage hadn't been found guilty and was
later acquitted. But I do understand because it's like a
perfect storm of everything.
That the media in some parts thrives on, but also
what consumers want. Like, nothing sells better and nothing gets
(25:35):
better numbers or more attention than a beautiful young woman,
especially a beautiful young white woman at the center of
some sort of very intense and gruesome crime. It's like
all of these different facets of society coming together. And
Speaker 2 (25:48):
who
doesn't respond in the moment like we would expect someone to.
And she does kind of explain that she has a
bit of a weird personality and she doesn't always act
in a way that people understand and
And as we know now, with, you know, people being
on spectrums, like, we understand not everyone reacts the same.
So it is really interesting, but also too, I read
an article by an Italian journalist who was like, everyone
said the Italian media was out to get her and
(26:10):
demonize her, and that is partly true. But it was
more the American press and others who picked up on
that and ran with it. Oh,
Speaker 1 (26:18):
absolutely. And we know from like, looking back at the
coverage that so many American news outlets sent whole news teams,
camera people, reporters.
Over there, who were there for months at a time,
camped in front of the crime scene, camped outside of
the prison, the courthouse, following Amanda's family around and people
involved in the story. And a lot of the story
came from just images that they would capture of her
(26:39):
going in and out of different court proceedings, and not
just what was in the courtroom at the time. And
if you look at just the pictures and the videos
at the time, I mean, I know we're looking through
it through a lens of like, the story we were
being fed at the time, but she does look very guilty,
if you look at just the media coverage. She does
look like
Vixen who orchestrated to kill someone because of the pictures
they chose to run because of the videos they showed,
(27:01):
and because she wasn't acting like a perfect victim of
how you would expect someone in that situation
to react.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah. And it is really interesting to watch this drama,
understanding the true crime behind it, because a lot of
it is factual. Like a lot of it is, and
their recreation of the crime scene, the court proceedings weren't
recorded either, so we don't know exactly, they were behind
closed doors, so we don't know exactly what happened there.
But
There were photographers in the courtroom that captured these moments too, and,
(27:27):
and they really recreated some of that incredibly well to
the point where when I was looking at some photos,
I had to stop myself and go, Hang on, is
that the real Amanda Knox, or is that the actress
playing Amanda Knox? Because they
I did a really faithful recreation of her outfits, the
apartment inside the apartment, which was really quite incredible. I
scrolled through the crime scene photos myself and had a
(27:48):
look at what it really looked like, and it really does.
They've done a very faithful job at recreating it.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And that's part of the reason getting into like, why
this TV show exists, is that they wanted to be
really faithful to the story. And obviously, there's a lot
of back and forth over whether the TV show should
exist or not. Like, even people who don't have any
thoughts on whether or not she's guilty or what happened
have a bit of an issue of, one, a story
like this being dredged up, but two,
(28:14):
If it was even necessary to put it into like
the entertainment drama space. Because since Amanda Knox was acquitted
that final time, she's written two different memoirs, she's done
a podcast, there's so many documentaries, some that she's out
of hand, and some that she hasn't. She's done well
over 100 interviews at this stage just because she's done
so many,
Speaker 2 (28:34):
including here at Mamma Mia.
Which we'll play a little bit off in a minute. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Like she has really told her story. So a lot
of people were thinking like, why go back for like
another sip from the well to this story? So there's
a lot of questions and commentary around whether or not
this TV show should have been made and should it exist.
I think we both have strong feelings on that, and
there's a lot of strong feelings from the public, which
is what we're gonna get into next.
(28:58):
So you say the Amanda Knox case so closely now,
you've watched the full drama series. I know you've seen
all of the commentary from people who've watched it and
from the families involved. What's your thought on whether or
not this TV show should exist?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I'm so conflicted. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (29:12):
me too. Isn't that interesting? Even after everything we've consumed,
usually at this stage of the game, I would have
a very clear view of whether or not.
Not something like this should have been made, but like
everything else with this story, it's like
very complex.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is. And I think the biggest thing is that
this will never be Meredith Kercher's story. And that is
what is touched on a little bit in the twisted
tale of Amanda Knox, that it should be about a
beautiful young woman whose life was cut tragically short. And
it should be about the man who did that to
her and the fact that he is spending his life
(29:46):
behind bars, although I believe he's been released now. So,
Why is it never about Meredith? Why is it always
about Amanda? And she acknowledges that, and she acknowledges that
Meredith is now essentially her story. But for the family
of Meredith, like, I can fully understand why they have
responded the way they have. Like, why are we doing
this again? Why do we keep talking about this story
like this is Amanda's story?
(30:08):
But also, if you put yourself in Amanda's shoes and
someone falsely accused me of murder, sent me to prison,
and really dragged my name through the mud for years
and years and years, a legacy that she still lives
with to this day, there are still legions of people
who do not believe her. They believe that she is guilty.
And they will tell her. And there is a part
(30:31):
in the series where she starts to like, understand the
new technology that she's come back into the world to see,
and
The messages she starts to get are pretty intense, and,
you know, there were death threats and, you know, telling
her to take her own life. And like, that's an
intense thing to deal with all the time. So would I,
in Amanda's shoes, want to keep telling my story so
(30:52):
that people understand me better and who understand the situation better,
I guess I get it from her perspective and wanting
to set the record straight over and over and over
when people still don't believe you. Like, I really understand that.
But I just, I feel for Meredith's family whose story
just gets overlooked, misunderstood, and there are still people even
(31:15):
in Meredith's family who aren't sure what they believe either.
So to see Amanda also profiting from this, like, that's
hard for them to see and hard for them to take.
So I'm still really conflicted. I get it, but I
don't want to see Meredith again become the victim.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, and that's the difficult thing of watching it is
that Meredith Kercher's family were contacted in the lead up
to the show, like before it went into production, and
they told production they wanted nothing to do with it,
which was expected, so they pushed on ahead without it.
But it was more so when the show was released
and the fact that it's been coming out weekly, and
even the lead up to that with Amanda, like, releasing
a podcast and, and doing a lot of press around
(31:52):
that and seeing all those headlines come up again. And
the response from the family was always, Please don't do this,
please don't drag this up again, please don't drag her
name in front of the world again.
And it's something that Amanda Knox does talk about quite
a bit. And something I always, when I'm watching interviews
with her, find interesting is that she'll often say to
the interviewer, You know my name, and you know Meredith's name,
but do you know the name of the man who
actually committed the crime? And a lot of the time
(32:14):
people don't know his name, and they don't know his
story or his face or anything because he's not a
young woman and that's not an exciting part of the case.
But in terms of why they made it, Amanda Knox
has always said that it's because she gave birth to
a daughter and
And then suddenly she realized that her daughter would be
growing up in a world where so many people still
thought she was guilty of murder and that she's
Speaker 2 (32:35):
inheriting a legacy.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Exactly. And it's almost like reading between the lines of
listening to Amanda speak about this is that it's almost
like her last ditch effort to clear her name through
drama because she knows how much, especially at this point
in time right now, how much the world responds to
drama in a way that we sometimes don't respond to
an interview or an article.
So she's written the memoirs, she's done press tours so
(32:58):
many times over the years, she's done the podcast, so
many people have released information about it.
And yet she only saw a drama as the way
to clear her name, essentially. And maybe it's because she
could have complete control over the narrative that in a way,
you can't have with even a memoir or something, because
a memoir, you're just reading the same voice all the
way through. With the TV show, you're seeing all of
(33:19):
these actors relive those moments. And like we're saying, it
was very sensory heavy show. So you almost feel like
you've
Gone through it with her. And so that idea was
like people would watch the show and it's so through
her eyes that you would come out of it believing her.
And the subtext I think of all her interviews is
that she thought that was worth bringing it up again,
as like one last attempt to clear her name.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
And we are seeing this real moment for these stories
being told in this manner. So
Like the Menendez brothers, for example, I had reported on
their story as a journalist, many times over the years
as they've kind of attempted to be free. And I
had a very pre-formed opinion of whether I thought what
(34:02):
they did was done purely for greed, which is what
they'd been positioned as in the media and by the prosecution.
And then when you see their stories dramatized, and you
understand a little bit more about what was going on
behind closed doors, and you understand that, you know, maybe
as children, they were abused, and so, you know, you
understand the crime a little bit better, and now there
(34:24):
are calls for their freedom, even though they are not
free as of us recording this podcast. But I can
understand why Amanda might want to also be a part
of this moment where people are reclaiming their own narrative.
Especially when it's through a drama that can take you
to the place and the time and can put you
in the situation. And like, if I was 20 in
a foreign country where I don't speak the language, was
(34:48):
accused of a terrible, terrible crime, and have no family support,
and not understand what's happening to me, and finding myself
in jail, not even understanding what I've signed, because the
truth of the matter is she signed a document.
And she didn't even fully understand what it was she
was signing. And so, to put myself in that position, like,
(35:10):
that would be terrifying. And I don't think you get that,
you're right. When you listen to her speak on a
podcast or you read her memoir, it doesn't put you
in the time and place, and it doesn't make you
experience that alongside her. And I think it's actually kind
of smart because I did legitimately change my view.
In this case, after
Speaker 1 (35:27):
watching this. Yeah, yeah, to an extent. And again, it's
just nothing kind of pulls you in like a drama.
It's like we saw this year with Apple cider vinegar
and Belle Gibson. Like, a lot of people knew that story.
They knew that she had lied about having cancer, but
there was this renewed kind of rally behind the victims
and the journalists involved and everything worldwide, in a way
that hadn't happened, even when we saw Belle Gibson giving
these interviews. And I think with the drama too, it's
(35:48):
so many elements of you.
To control it, but also like the choice of actress,
like with Grace Van Patten, who gives this very kind
of vulnerable performance, and she's acting in a way that
we didn't, at least in the clips we saw, and
this was like a very strategic thing from the production
team from her, because she's meant to be playing a
woman who's been thrust into this, and so we don't
(36:09):
see her acting for the cameras in the way that
people think Amanda Knox did.
And a lot of effort went into casting the exact
right person for that role, which you can imagine because
they didn't want to cast an actress who might be
almost painted with the same brush that Amanda Knox is. Like,
is she seen as a sexualized actress? What other roles
has she played? Will she come across as like, not
(36:29):
sympathetic and vulnerable enough? And so there was this real
call to find a very vulnerable looking actress, which I
think Grace Van Patten, who most people
I know from the TV show Tell Me Lies is
kind of almost known for being that type of character
actress where she often plays the more subdued, kind of
almost victim character. And it was meant to be Margaret
Crawley originally. She was attached and they moved her out
(36:50):
and put her into this role. But I think the
other interesting thing is who else is involved behind the
scenes of this production, which is Monica Lewinsky,
Speaker 2 (36:56):
which was a real surprise when I saw them sitting
on an American TV.
Show on the couch next to each other. I'm like, Oh,
that's an interesting lineup of guests, and didn't realize they
were talking about the exact same their co-project
Speaker 1 (37:06):
they've been working on. So they met in 2017. They
were both speaking at an event, and Amanda said that
she was like getting quite overcome and quite stressed about
publicly speaking, but also just everything about reliving her story
over and over again. And she said she went to
the green room and she was stressing out, and Monica
Lewinsky came in.
And they very instantly bonded, shared stories. Monica Lewinsky was
(37:27):
giving her tips on how to do this next part
of being in the public eye. I've spent the majority
of my adult life, uh, feeling like no one cared
what I had to say, and, um, anything I did
say was always twisted against me, and then I find
myself invited to go give a talk for the first
time ever, and I'm utterly terrified.
(37:48):
I also learned that someone else is going to be
speaking at this uh this event and it happens to
be the one and only Monica Lewinsky whose Vanity Fair
articles and whose TED Talks have given me hope that
there might be a path forward in my life. And
so I asked the organizer if I could please, please,
(38:09):
please meet her. I think Amanda was the highlight of
that event that day, and people were so
I think they were just so impressed by you, which
I was when we first met and I had so
much compassion for you and um and it really was
kind of the beginning of
(38:30):
Us knowing each other. Monica Lewinsky, for anyone who doesn't know,
in the late 1990s was working in the White House
and said that she had had an affair with then
President Bill Clinton and was absolutely, there's no other way
to put it, slut shamed. And, and painted to be
a liar and all of these things.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
She seduced the
president
Speaker 1 (38:49):
and became not just a huge villain and this hatred
of the world, but also just became
a mockery and, and just basically the entire world turned
against her. And you talk about people being canceled, but
they don't really get canceled, but she was really canceled.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Like a lot of jokes for like decades after that occurred.
And she has been the epitome of reclaiming the narrative.
And that's where social media has actually been the most
amazing thing for some people because she took to then Twitter,
which is now X, and
And we finally got to know who Monica Lewinsky actually
is and is not just this vixen intern who happened to,
(39:29):
you know, seduce the most powerful man in the world.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Because it did come out that she was telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, and she also has had a hand in documentaries
about that situation where she has been actually asked about
those experiences and has told them exactly what happened.
And so she's been able to really turn around, being
the butt of every late night host joke for a
long time. And she talks about her mom sitting next
to her bed and like begging her not to take
(39:57):
her own life because of just how bad it got
for her in the late 90s and early 2000s. And
so she is now thriving because she's been able to
tell her story and be believed. So that's, it makes
sense now that the two of them are working together on.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
And that's why Monica wanted to be involved in the
Amanda Knox in the televised version of her story. She said,
I can't relate to being falsely accused of a crime
like that because of her was a different situation. It
was more of a situation of public shaming. And she's like,
and I can't relate to being falsely in prison, but
I do know what it's like to have the world
turn against you and have your story not be your own.
And I think even though she had hard evidence to
(40:35):
show that what she said about the president and everything
that happened to her afterwards was true.
A lot of people still saw her, as you're saying,
in a different light. So when they did the Monica
Lewinsky TV series, when Beanie Feldstein played her, it's again,
that whole thing of drama, reshaping a narrative in the
way that factual information can't was that brought a whole
new audience over to her side. So I think that's
(40:56):
why she was so instrumental on this Amanda Knox series
of being an executive producer and being able to say, like,
tell this part of the story, or don't tell this part,
or even, like, we don't know the extent of it,
but I think she would even be.
coaching her through the press around it and everything to
sort of shape it as like the perfect kind of
reclaiming of her story. Because in the series, Amanda does
become this strong hero. Like, she almost becomes like a
(41:17):
young adult, like a Katniss Everdeen or something towards the end,
and off you felt that it was done in a
very careful way for her to at first be a victim,
and then they kind of made her into this heroine, like,
she's not just clearing her own name, but she's standing
up against the system.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
She's becoming an advocate for people who've been.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
And she's walking into the courtroom and saying, like, I
speak the language. I do this, I've done the work.
And then we see her coming back into the prison
and everyone applauding for her and cheering for her and
her being seen as this savior. OK,
Speaker 2 (41:45):
hold
that thought, Laura Brodnick, because I think what really shook
me a little bit watching this is that break from
reality into fantasy that happens quite regularly throughout the entire series.
I want to get your take on exactly why that
is and what is happening next.
So, as we mentioned just before the break, then, if
you're watching this series, you would have noticed that sometimes
(42:08):
it's Amanda telling her story and she does a little
bit of that via narration, which I know some people despise.
I actually quite like it.
But then it'll cut to really fanciful scenes. In one,
she's a child and her teddy bears are applauding her
for performing a little at home dance, and often it's like,
there's one in a library where she's like floating around
(42:30):
on the ladder that goes up and rolls around. Like,
it just, it's this weird pull from reality into fantasy.
What is that
about?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, it's interesting to bring up because that is the
part of the show that a lot of critics and
viewers had the most issue with.
Because a lot of what people gave the show a
pass for is the fact that they said Amanda was
trying to tell her story and also honor Meredith's story,
and we see a bit of a montage of Meredith
at the end as a sort of like, just remember,
she's at the center of this. But a lot of
(42:59):
people feel that that feels very disingenuous when they also
added these fantasy elements to it. But it was a
very specific choice because Amanda Knox and the team said
that they wanted to add all these facets of magical realism.
And magical realism, if you're not
Across the whole fantasy kind of world. Like we have
high fantasy, which is a whole world being recreated with
its whole different ways of being in its own rules.
(43:21):
And then you have more of like fantasy, which is
very kind of old school, like a whole world that's
touched by magic, and then you have magical realism, which
is a story that takes place in our world as
it is now, and there's one tiny string of magic,
and that's what we kind of see from Amanda's point
of view. And they wanted to do that. It's interesting
because at the top of the series, you almost feel
like you're
(43:41):
Watching like a bit of an Italian kind of romantic drama.
And that's very deliberate from them because they wanted to
show that it's all about putting you in Amanda's mind.
And in her mind, at the start of the show,
when we meet her, she is a young woman in Italy,
having adventure and having a new romance and how intoxicating
that is. And they wanted to show that as the
story went along, those moments where you see the teddy
(44:03):
bears applauding her or her floating. One is that they're
trying to make a little homage to some movies, like
an Amelie or a pulp fiction.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Emily that her and Raffaeli watched the night of Meredith's murder,
Speaker 1 (44:13):
which apparently is the movie they watched that night. And
there's a kind of a few fanciful scenes in that movie,
but they took it the next step higher. And this
is where I think maybe I take issue with some critics,
is like, you can't have a story that is about
telling this huge truth that's based on a rape and
murder and frame yourself as Emily. Like they're two very
different methods of storytelling
Speaker 2 (44:33):
clashed.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
It's jarring,
Speaker 2 (44:35):
isn't it? It is jarring and it's, it's.
Hard, especially when you're looking at it from a true
crime perspective, because, like, you are, as you said earlier,
pulled into this world, which is really intense and it
feels like you're being interrogated or you're in prison with
her and you're so, like, you lose all hope at
some stages, and then, you know, it's all like butterflies
and fairies, and it feels like, oh my God, where
(44:57):
is my brain now supposed to take
that?
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah, and I would have probably maybe liked it more
as a storytelling device if maybe you can see her
from the beginning to the end as she's in prison.
For so many years, if you maybe saw her start
to lose her grip on reality as the show goes
along and she starts having some sort of illusion to that. Yeah,
maybe something, cause like, you do hear of people in
these situations that things like that happen, that their mental
(45:20):
state becomes so intensified that they do start hallucinating or
recreating stories. But the way it's threaded through, it's to
show that she's almost an otherworldly being, and they're trying
to show that she has this very fanciful mind. She's
not like other people, which is why
She didn't react in a certain way. So it all
comes that full circle of trying to show her innocence.
But I think it comes across as a little messy
(45:41):
and a little self-indulgent, and self-indulgent is what a lot
of people have labeled the
series.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
And you really can't be self-indulgent when you're trying to
tell your story in the midst of the murder of
someone who you called a friend. Like, that is hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (45:53):
it's, it's almost the thing is, like, they did what
they set out to do, which I find the interesting
thing too. Like, I find it difficult to sit down
and watch a series like this and say, but you
should have told this or you should.
told that. Like, it's the Amanda Knox story is kind
of what it's meant to be. What I think we
need is we need someone to go and make more
of a Meredith Kerch story, which, to be honest, I
(46:14):
don't think I've seen anything. I know a lot about
her life, but I don't think there's anything that's attributed
completely to her where we would see a dramatization of like,
her childhood, her life, her and even
Speaker 2 (46:23):
in this, we don't even see a dramatization of her murder.
We only see Amanda turn up after the
fact.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah. And I guess like the thinking from the writer's
team is that they
Didn't want to, they obviously have to use her name
in her story because it's so wrapped up in Amanda,
but they didn't want it to be overly gory and
see that as kind of like a voyeurism into her murder,
which so much of true crime can be if done
the wrong way. It can
Speaker 2 (46:45):
be, but also, like, when we're talking about the rape
and murder of a young woman, it feels like that
should be given a bit more gravitas than it has. Like,
it wasn't, we weren't given a moment to mourn Meredith
at all during this whole thing. And maybe that's the point,
because a
Amanda also wasn't given an opportunity to mourn her friend. Like,
maybe that's the reason for that. But myself as, you know,
(47:06):
the voyeur looking in on this, I felt like Meredith
was this kind of otherworldly character who you never really
get to
know.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yeah, she's like a faceless victim, almost in a story
that is about the end of her life, but also
her life and her, and I know there's sometimes like
in the, they do like cut to looking at her
family members and cut to looking at her friends. And
so you get, you get a little bit of her
life through their reaction.
But not a lot. And I guess it's also at
the top of the show, because it's told through Amanda's perspective,
and though it's dramatized, it very much shows her and
(47:37):
Meredith becoming friends and this closeness between them, which if
you listen to any of Meredith's friends or family, they
say that they weren't close friends, they didn't get along,
that um, Meredith felt very uneasy about her. And something
about that I find almost more troubling.
Because not showing the murder and the impact of the
rape is definitely not the best choice, but also rewriting
(47:59):
this woman.
To have this friendship she didn't have to make the
character of Amanda look more sympathetic, is also a disservice
to her, I think. Cause you're
Speaker 2 (48:08):
just. But again, this is from Amanda's perspective, and
Speaker 1 (48:11):
she
says they were friends, yeah. So that, that's the hard
I think, the blurring line of I almost wish they
had made it a bit more, almost a bit more
fanciful and a bit more of a series rather than
like a beat by beat retelling of an event, because
it makes it even harder to kind of separate fact
and fiction because it's so meshed
Speaker 2 (48:28):
together. It is really mesh.
Together. And if you do want the answer to this question,
did Amanda return to Italy many years later, after she'd
married Christopher Robinson and had a little baby girl, who
we talked about earlier, to meet with Mignini, who is,
she calls him my prosecutor, who, the man who investigated
and then prosecuted the case. Yes, she did do that.
(48:49):
She did return to Italy, she did have a conversation
with him. We only know from Amanda's perspective what that
conversation looks like. And then there is a scene at
the end, which makes it look like Mignini.
Goes to confession. We don't know if that's true. But
the priest who Amanda spoke to in jail and who
also happened to be Mignini's childhood priest, and who helped
(49:09):
bring them together at the end, he's a real person.
And so maybe that did happen. Maybe that did. Who knows?
But yeah, there's a lot of blurring of lines here,
but you just got to remember when you're going to
watch this, it is from Amanda's perspective. It's her narrative,
it's her story. It's not Meredith's story. That's a story
we're still
yet to hear.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
And Amanda has actually addressed
What her relationship with Meredith Kercher's family looks like now
on Mamma Mia's No Filter podcast, talking to Kate Lanbrook and,
and kind of explaining where she sits with the family now.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Thanks so
much for listening to this very special crossover episode of
the Spiel and True Crime Conversations. The spiel is produced
by Monisha Iswaran, and True Crime Conversations is produced by
Talie Blackman. Audio production for this episode was done by
Scott Stronick with video production by Julian Rosario. Bye. We
should do this again one day.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
We should. Stay tuned for another crossover.
Yeah.
I'm Laura Brodnik, host of the Spill, which is Mamma
Mia's daily entertainment and pop culture podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I'm Claire Murphy. I'm the host of True Crime Conversations,
which is our weekly true crime podcast, speaking to the
people who know the most about these crimes. Well, I
am the host when Gemma Bath is not on maternity leave,
and she will be returning, never fear.
But we know just how popular true crime is, whether
you listen to it on a podcast, whether you watch
it on your streaming service of choice. But what about
(00:43):
when crime meets drama? And that is what we are
talking about today.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yes, that is what we're here to discuss. So, we
are talking about the new Disney Plus series, The Twisted
Tale of Amanda Knox. And if you're listening to this
through the spill feed, we have heard all of your comment.
that you want more true crime series and you want
to kind of dissect the actors and the production, the
behind the scenes facts, but you also want to know
what happened in the real life case and where those
(01:09):
people are now and why these stories were chosen to
be told in a dramatic fashion. So we're going to
be deep diving into that in today's episode. So Claire,
as our true crime expert, you're gonna take us through
the Amanda Knox case and what happened from the beginning.
Because I think for a lot of people like myself,
I have such a memory of watching this unfold on
TV at the time, but there's so much more to
(01:31):
this case, I think, and it became a lot more
in depth than a lot of people realize.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, and if you got your information about this case
from the news media, then that may have actually twisted
the way you might see it or view it. So
we're gonna get to the bottom of that as well.
But I'll step you through where this all began.
OK, so first thing I need to warn you is
that this case spans years. So it went on for
a really long time. So bear with us, there's a
(01:58):
little bit to get through. It started off in September 2007,
that is when Meredith Kercher, who was a British student,
she was spending a year studying abroad in Italy, and
she moved into a share accommodation, which is the villa
at 7 Via della Pergola in Perugia. And then later
that same month, just 10 days later,
(02:18):
Amanda Knox, who was an American student doing the same thing,
spending a year in Italy, she moved into the same address.
So there are 4 young girls living in this small
apartment or small villa. There are some boys living in
the flat downstairs. So they all share this villa together.
On October 25, Amanda meets a young Italian boy called Raffaele. Now,
(02:38):
they met at a concert, they are immediately in love.
They do that honeymoon period where they
Spent literally every minute of every day together. She then
starts staying at his house, essentially every night. She has
a job, so she goes and works at a bar,
a local bar, and she is studying as well, so
she's doing that too, but essentially her and Raffaeli now
(02:59):
become inseparable.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes. And in the show, it was depicted they had
only been together about a week before the events of
Meredith's murder took place. And I, I saw a lot
of feedback from the show of people thinking that that
was added into the story for extra dramatic effect, or
Make their relationship look more like a whirlwind. But they actually,
isn't that correct? They only were together really for one
week before their whole world blew up with these accusations.
(03:21):
Absolutely
Speaker 2 (03:21):
true. So they literally spent a week together out in
the world as a new couple before they were thrown
into all of this drama. So, come November 1, so
sometime after 8:30 p.m., Meredith Kercher was murdered in the
villa she shares with her flatmates.
Amanda and Raffaele are at Raffaele's apartment, and the two
(03:44):
of them both switched their phone off that night around
the same time that Meredith is murdered. Now, Amanda explains
that she had been messaging with her boss. She was
maybe gonna go into work that night, and he messaged
her to say that she didn't have to come in.
And she was like, Great. This means I get to
spend more time with my brand new, very handsome young
(04:04):
man boyfriend in his apartment.
And so they watched a movie and they ate some
food and they smoked a joint together, and Raffaele had
also turned his phone off because he didn't want to
speak to his dad. He spoke to his dad every
night on the phone. He's like, No, I want the
two of us to just spend uninterrupted time together.
This is very important, because police see that as in
(04:26):
this day and age where technology is used so frequently
to track us, to find out where we are, to
marry up locations to potential crimes, that if you turn
your phone off, it almost looks like an admission of guilt,
that you have done something wrong. So that is part
of the case against them.
She also sends a message to her boss before turning
(04:46):
her phone off that says, Thanks, I'll see you later.
That is interpreted by police very differently, had they not
been Italian, if English had been their first language, we
say that all the time. See you later. It's part
of our vernacular, but in Italy, it's taken more literally,
Speaker 1 (05:04):
as if they had a plan.
To see each other later. And when we're watching the series,
you see Amanda trying to explain to the police that
it's just another form of saying goodbye and how quickly
that leads to her being implicated, because again, they're thinking
that she's making a plan to meet up with him. And,
and is he involved or did she leave the apartment.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And the fact that her boss is a certain nationality
also plays into this. We'll get to that in a second.
So, it's the next morning, Amanda's woken up, the night
before there'd been a spill or a leaking something at
Raffaele's house. She wants to go home, she needs to
get a mop cause he doesn't own one. Typical man.
And then she also wants to like have a shower
and just get changed, and she will later on explain
why she did that to Raffaele in a very beautiful,
(05:45):
lovely scene where she'd like, I just wanted to look
pretty for you and wear a dress. But so she
goes home and the front door is open.
Which is not unusual because the front door that they
had of this villa was a little bit dodgy. You
had to physically keylock it for it to stay shut.
And if you didn't do that, the wind would sometimes
just blow it open. So, Amanda's thinking, one of my
(06:05):
flatmates has just run down the street to grab something,
didn't think to key lock the door. It's blown open
by itself. So she steps inside. She walks through to
her own room, she goes to have a shower, she
steps out onto the bath mat and realizes there's some
blood on the bath mat.
She also notices a little bit of it on the
sink area too. Now, for anyone who's lived in a
(06:27):
share house full of women.
We know the blood sometimes is a part of our
day to day life. Was this menstrual blood? Did someone
cut themselves shaving? It's in the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
That's it. There's so many possibilities that it could be
so many people using that bathroom.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Exactly right. So she goes, Ooh, that's kind of gross,
but doesn't think that automatically jump to someone's been murdered
in the house. She does notice, though, that someone has
gone to the toilet. They have done a poo and
they haven't flushed it.
And that then is the first time she fully realizes
that something's not right. Which is interesting because if you
(07:03):
live in a house full of women, sometimes women can
be pretty gross, especially when it comes to menstrual blood,
but there are certain things that she knows her flatmates
just would not do, and that is leave an unflushed
poo in the toilet.
So she leaves, and she asks Raffaele to come back
to the house, and she's like, I don't understand what's happened.
(07:24):
She goes back inside, realizes that one of her other flatmates,
rooms has been broken into. So the window is broken
and there's glass on the ground. She's unsure if she's
been robbed because it's her flatmate's room, so she's not
sure if anything is missing, but she thinks someone has
maybe been in the house. And then when she goes
back past the bathroom,
It looks like the poo has been flushed. She doesn't
(07:44):
go in and have a look at it, but it
looks like it's been flushed, so she goes, Oh my God,
that person must have been in the house while I
was in the house. So she starts to really freak out.
Raffaele turns up and they have a look, and they
realize that Meredith, one of her flatmates, her door is locked.
They knock on it, they call her name, she doesn't answer,
they think she's not there.
But they're not sure what's going on. They call police,
(08:05):
but two officers do turn up, but they're not the
police they've actually called. Yes. And this is true. 2
of the fraud investigation police turn up because they have
found 2 mobile phones thrown into someone's back garden.
Now, they believe that the phones belong to one of
the other flatmates, not Meredith, but that is due to
(08:25):
a SIM card being shared amongst the girls. They actually
belong to Meredith, and so they've been taken from her
and thrown over the back fence of someone's property. So
these fraud cops turn up and they start to ask
them about the phones and they're like, Hang on, we
think someone's broken into our house. And so these guys
automatically become in charge of this crime scene.
They end up calling in investigators because when the other
(08:49):
flatmates come home, and they all realize that Meredith's door
is still locked, one of these guys kicks the door
open and finds a body. Now, Meredith,
Has been raped, she's had her throat cut. There is
blood everywhere. She's covered by her bedding. So you can
see in the crime scene photos that one of her
(09:11):
feet is sticking out, and you can see just the
top of her head, but there was a lot of blood.
And so that is when the homicide team is brought
in and they start to investigate.
Now, this is where we have to understand, watching the
twisted tale of Amanda Knox. This is told from Amanda's
(09:31):
perspective and not from the police's perspective.
The difference in the way that the Italian justice system
works is very different to, say, the American or the
Australian justice system. So the person who will be prosecuting
you in court is the same person who investigates the crime.
So Mignini, who is a real man, is a real character,
so he's a real person, the character in the show.
(09:53):
So he comes on board as like the lead investigator,
but he's also gonna be prosecuting this in court.
There is a detective who is also a real person,
a woman who takes an immediate dislike to Amanda. She's
one of the first to question her, and it's very
obvious that she distrusts Amanda's reaction to the crime.
(10:16):
And we can see this, it has been documented. Amanda
does stand outside with everybody else when the investigative team
comes in.
And she's with Raffaele, and you've got to remember they've
been together for days. They're still in the honeymoon period.
He's comforting her. She's like smiling and laughing with him,
and like, they're cuddling and kissing a little bit and
it all seems a little bit not right to the detectives.
(10:38):
They're like, if my flatmate, who I supposedly am quite
close to, even though we've only lived together for a
little while, if we are seeing it right, she's not
fazed by her roommate being brutally murdered in her home.
So, that is when things start to shift back to
the police station. They're all brought in for questioning. Meredith's friends,
(11:00):
the other roommates, Amanda and Raffaele, are questioned, and it
seems like at the beginning, they're already suspecting her. They
do ask her questions about her whereabouts, and they try
and find alibis. There is a lot because she's there
all day. And then it's noted that she's sitting in
Raffaele's lap in the waiting room in the police station.
(11:21):
And again, detectives are looking at this like this is
not the behavior of somebody whose friend has just been murdered.
Meredith's British friends are there, and they too are looking
at this thinking, why is she acting this way when
Meredith has just been brutally slain in their home that
they share together. So there's a lot of questions being
asked about why Amanda did not act a certain way
(11:42):
in the aftermath of Meredith's death.
And so then the questioning amps up a little bit
from detectives, and then they allow her to go home,
but it's already the next day almost, and she's exhausted,
and they tell her, You need to be back here
within a few hours. So she goes home, has a shower,
comes back again, doesn't go home, it's a crime scene,
she goes to Raffaele's has a shower, comes back. She's exhausted.
(12:04):
She has had very little sleep. She doesn't really know
what's going on.
And she's interrogated by police again and again and again.
And this is the interesting part of this whole thing
is that,
As I said, this drama series is told from Amanda's perspective.
What is also true is that police did not record
this interrogation. Yes. We will never know exactly what happened
(12:27):
in that room. There is no evidence to fall back on,
there is no video. Amanda at that time did not
speak great Italian. She's hearing all of this through an
interpreter at a time where she's tired, doesn't know what's
going on.
So her interpretation of it is that they essentially coerced
her into an admission of guilt. So this is a
(12:48):
little bit of what the interrogation sounds like from Amanda's
perspective in the twisted tale of Amanda Knox.
I don't remember
(13:22):
and brought him home and then he killed her.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Is that where you met Patrick.
I don't, you lying.
(13:46):
It was Patrick. It's interesting listening to that and knowing
how much of a hand Amanda Knox had in not
just the creation of the show and the behind the
scenes of production. She's an executive producer, but she also
gave so much information to the writers and almost guided
them step by step of how she wanted each scene
to play out.
How it came from her memory, and then she even
(14:06):
helped write some of the episodes. And it's like they're
looking back on this very specific moment of media attention,
like those moments where she and Raffaele are outside the
house and they're hugging, and that's the moment where in
the series and in real life, we know the police
kind of turned against them.
And both of them have looked back on that time,
and I think you can see it come through the series,
because we're hearing it from Amanda's point of view, is
(14:28):
that she was quite shell shocked. And so she was
being very physical towards him because that's how she deals
with trauma. And he was almost clocking how it looked
to people around them, but he later on said in
his own memoir that he wrote about the situation that
he thought it was too cold to be pushing her
away in that moment where she
was wanting to be very affectionate, wanting to sit in
(14:49):
his lap. It was like a comfort thing. And even
scenes where you see her doing like leading integration, like
she does the splits in the waiting room and all
that sort of stuff, that all really happened, but it's
all just like a fear response from her is what
she's saying. And as we get led into the interrogation,
it's really interesting because as you're saying, there's no film,
there's no video of that moment. Everyone who's in that
room has a different story. But the camera work
(15:12):
In the way that they shape it to the audience
is almost like you're supposed to see it so directly
through Amanda's eyes that like the camera frame keeps getting smaller,
the noises keep getting louder, they're getting repetitive. It's all
these kind of sensory tricks that laid over the mean
to each other, all these sensory tricks that are laid
over that are meant to almost like make you feel
as a viewer that you're being interrogated. So the idea
is like, your heart is supposed to start beating fast,
(15:34):
you're supposed to start getting in like a fight or
flight situation.
And so when she yells out Patrick's name at the end,
it's almost like this release of like wanting to know
the escape of how you're gonna wear that. Exactly, exactly,
because she's given them what they want in that moment.
So it's a really interesting twist of putting you in
Amanda's shoes. And I guess maybe that explains what happened
(15:55):
next if you're looking at the real crime. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (15:57):
so you heard there she says it was Patrick and
Patrick is her boss at the bar.
Patrick Lumumba, who is an African man who has immigrated
to Italy, and he's opened this bar. Police had found
a hair in Meredith Kercher's bedroom, which matched an African man.
There was a young black man living in the apartment downstairs,
(16:20):
and he was terrified to hear that there was a
hair that potentially linked him.
But then they found out that the person that Amanda
had texted, I'll see you later, which they took literally,
that man was also of African origin, and so for them,
puzzle pieces started to click into place.
Amanda had obviously organized to meet this man at some
(16:41):
stage that night, and that man has hair that matches
the one that's on the scene. So it all makes
sense to them. So, she tells them that Patrick did it,
and all of a sudden the interrogation stops. And as
we know now, and what you do learn about in
the drama series and the documentary too that
Amanda Knox has made about this is that is a
very well-known interrogation technique. It is one that police have
(17:02):
been using for a very long time, and we've seen
cases be overturned, like the Central Park Five, for example,
the same interrogation technique was used on them, and they
falsely confessed to a murder that they did not commit.
And so we've seen it happen before, where if you
just layer on the pressure and you get people to
think that maybe then remembering something wrong, and then you
(17:23):
plant a seed that potentially it happened this way, like,
maybe you did leave the apartment that night, maybe you
did meet with Patrick, maybe you did go back to
your apartment and then they start to make you believe
under
Stress and duress that you are wrong and they are right.
And so to stop it, all you can do is admit.
And so that is what we're seeing play out from
Amanda's perspective now. The detectives, they say that it did
(17:47):
not play out like that, that that interrogation did not
happen like that. Also, Amanda claims she was hit in
the head a couple of times during it, which they
say did not happen.
And they say that at no stage did they plant
a seed that it was Patrick. Like, that came from her.
They said that they did not do that. So, we
can't know what the truth is in amongst all of that. So,
moving on, it's now November 19, so it's 18 days since.
(18:11):
Meredith's murder, and police announced that there is actually a
new suspect. They've arrested Patrick, Amanda and Raffaeli at this stage,
and they realized that a man who had been arrested
a few days before Meredith's murder for breaking into a kindergarten, essentially,
That he is actually the suspect linked to Meredith's murder.
(18:32):
His name is Rudy Guedey. He is also an African
immigrant into Italy, and he had a rap sheet, robberies,
various crimes against women, like, so he really fit the MO.
So when they figured out that Rudy was their guy,
they had to let Patrick go because his alibi stood
up and was checked, and they did manage to find
(18:55):
Rudy Gade at a train station and they arrest him.
Now, Amanda and Raffaele at this stage think, OK, they've
finally found the murderer. They will let us go. No,
that is not what happens now. And in fact, police
ramp up their involvement, and they create a narrative that
there was some kind of sexual nature to the crime. Obviously,
(19:15):
Meredith was raped, so that was already where they were
being led.
But they believed that it was more than just a
man breaking in and raping Meredith, that Amanda and Raffaele
were playing some kind of game, and they wanted to
involve Meredith, and she didn't want to, and that's why
she was killed. They also had been collecting DNA from
(19:38):
the scene, and
This is what will bring them unstuck later on down
the track. They filmed the entire thing. They find DNA
of Meredith's on a knife that has both Amanda and
Raffaele's DNA on it. Also, it was at Raffaele's apartment.
They also find some of Raffaele's DNA on a bra
strap that looks to have been broken off in some
(19:58):
kind of scuffle.
But as we'll later find out, those two were then
eventually thrown out. So Rudy Guede asks for a separate trial,
and he's fast tracked. So with, before Amanda and Raffaele
even make it to court, he is found guilty, sent
to jail, and sentenced. So, like, he's over and done with.
So then later, Amanda and Raffaele go to trial, and
(20:21):
at this stage is when the media really.
Starts to sink its teeth into this story. Back in
the day, it was MySpace. They'd trolled through Amanda's MySpace
and found every picture that made her look even vaguely bad.
And they start referring to her by a nickname, Foxy Knoxy,
which sounds terrible, but it was actually a nickname given
to her when she was playing soccer as a child.
And they made her into this kind of vixen character
(20:43):
who obviously was doing this for some kind of sexual
gratification and then turned on Meredith in the moment. So
if we fast forward now to December 4, 2009,
The jury finds Amanda and Raffaeli guilty, which comes as
a real shock to everybody because the way that that
case was handled, the prosecutors didn't hand over a lot
(21:04):
of the evidence until very late. They didn't have a
chance to refute a lot of it. They were really
kind of flying by the seat of their pants at
a lot of these junctures of the trial, and they're
found guilty and they're sent off to prison.
And the two of them are so shell shocked, they
don't really know what to do. Amanda claims then that's
(21:24):
when she really started to research her own investigation, and
by this stage, she's becoming more fluent in Italian, so
she can read documentation better and she can understand the
processes a bit better.
But the media has really sunk its teeth into the
point where every little thing is being leaked of hers
to the press. So, for example, and this is true
(21:45):
in the drama, when she was admitted into prison, they
took a blood test and they falsely found her positive
for HIV. And she was told, basically, that's it, you
have HIV and, you know, in the early 2000s, we
didn't treat it as well as what we do in 2025.
It was a terrifying diagnosis then.
But she was kind of just told, Oh, yep, that's it.
And then to write a list of men that she
(22:06):
potentially had sexual contact with so that they can be contacted.
That list was then stolen from her cell and given
to the media to paint another picture of just how
immoral that this young American girl was. Eventually, there is
an appeal. So, 2011, they go back to court on appeal.
This is when the DNA evidence becomes crucial. So,
(22:29):
They watched the video of how the DNA collection process
was handled, and you can see in the investigation's own
video evidence that they handled it incorrectly. So just as
an example, that bra strap that we spoke about before,
in the first video evidence, we can see it's underneath
Meredith's pillow, and then by the next time that they
(22:50):
collect that evidence, it's on the floor under the corner
of a rug.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So it's been contaminated in the drama.
And there's a question of like, how much is it
being contaminated? And the person says, like, it doesn't actually
matter because the fact that it's been moved and handled
already makes that invisible
evidence. Exactly
Speaker 2 (23:06):
right. And you can see, and in the original trial,
they looked at that bra strap that obviously it had
been forcefully pulled apart and like the the prongs were
pulled apart. But really, what had happened is it's obviously
been stood on while it's on the floor, and you
can see that in the evidence between when you first
see it and when you second see it.
And then as far as the DNA on the knife
is concerned, there was so little trace evidence that they
(23:28):
had to override the DNA testing machine in order for
it to register. And they were questioned in court about that,
and they said, if you didn't override that machine, would
it have found trace DNA of all three of them,
and they said, probably not, of Meredith's DNA.
So, and also they found that the knife had been
transported in a box that had had other things in it,
(23:49):
so it was, it was poorly handled, so they were
acquitted after that. Amanda goes home to the US, Raffaele
attempts to get on with his life.
Amanda and Raffaele again, are brought to trial in Italy.
They decide to re-prosecute them. They are found guilty, the
next time around. Amanda does not return to Italy from
the US. Raffaele does eventually return to Italy to try
(24:12):
and defend himself, and then.
Then there is another appeal on that, and they do
then acquit them, and that's it. Case closed. So this
goes on for quite a few years. But as we
can see, there is a lot of truth in the drama,
the way that it's depicted, but also we can never know.
What exactly happened in some of these situations because it
(24:33):
is not documented. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (24:34):
so it's very much from her point of view and
her experience and and her take on it. So in
that case, it's not meant to be, I don't think,
watched as a factual program. It's more there to just
see it through her eyes. And for a lot of people,
they're coming to this story for nearly the first time
through this drama. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
And if you were, like I said, understanding it from
just media reports, the way that she was portrayed was interesting,
that she had become this kind of demon.
Girl, this American demon sexual deviant that they really painted
her as, and it was, it was widely believed in
the press that she was some kind of awful murderer
(25:09):
who was in it for sexual pleasure.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yes, that she was like a sex crazed maniac. And
to be honest, like I do understand, I mean, I
don't understand of obviously the, the horrific side of this,
of like taking a murder investigation and and demonizing someone
who at that stage hadn't been found guilty and was
later acquitted. But I do understand because it's like a
perfect storm of everything.
That the media in some parts thrives on, but also
what consumers want. Like, nothing sells better and nothing gets
(25:35):
better numbers or more attention than a beautiful young woman,
especially a beautiful young white woman at the center of
some sort of very intense and gruesome crime. It's like
all of these different facets of society coming together. And
Speaker 2 (25:48):
who
doesn't respond in the moment like we would expect someone to.
And she does kind of explain that she has a
bit of a weird personality and she doesn't always act
in a way that people understand and
And as we know now, with, you know, people being
on spectrums, like, we understand not everyone reacts the same.
So it is really interesting, but also too, I read
an article by an Italian journalist who was like, everyone
said the Italian media was out to get her and
(26:10):
demonize her, and that is partly true. But it was
more the American press and others who picked up on
that and ran with it. Oh,
Speaker 1 (26:18):
absolutely. And we know from like, looking back at the
coverage that so many American news outlets sent whole news teams,
camera people, reporters.
Over there, who were there for months at a time,
camped in front of the crime scene, camped outside of
the prison, the courthouse, following Amanda's family around and people
involved in the story. And a lot of the story
came from just images that they would capture of her
(26:39):
going in and out of different court proceedings, and not
just what was in the courtroom at the time. And
if you look at just the pictures and the videos
at the time, I mean, I know we're looking through
it through a lens of like, the story we were
being fed at the time, but she does look very guilty,
if you look at just the media coverage. She does
look like
Vixen who orchestrated to kill someone because of the pictures
they chose to run because of the videos they showed,
(27:01):
and because she wasn't acting like a perfect victim of
how you would expect someone in that situation
to react.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah. And it is really interesting to watch this drama,
understanding the true crime behind it, because a lot of
it is factual. Like a lot of it is, and
their recreation of the crime scene, the court proceedings weren't
recorded either, so we don't know exactly, they were behind
closed doors, so we don't know exactly what happened there.
But
There were photographers in the courtroom that captured these moments too, and,
(27:27):
and they really recreated some of that incredibly well to
the point where when I was looking at some photos,
I had to stop myself and go, Hang on, is
that the real Amanda Knox, or is that the actress
playing Amanda Knox? Because they
I did a really faithful recreation of her outfits, the
apartment inside the apartment, which was really quite incredible. I
scrolled through the crime scene photos myself and had a
(27:48):
look at what it really looked like, and it really does.
They've done a very faithful job at recreating it.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And that's part of the reason getting into like, why
this TV show exists, is that they wanted to be
really faithful to the story. And obviously, there's a lot
of back and forth over whether the TV show should
exist or not. Like, even people who don't have any
thoughts on whether or not she's guilty or what happened
have a bit of an issue of, one, a story
like this being dredged up, but two,
(28:14):
If it was even necessary to put it into like
the entertainment drama space. Because since Amanda Knox was acquitted
that final time, she's written two different memoirs, she's done
a podcast, there's so many documentaries, some that she's out
of hand, and some that she hasn't. She's done well
over 100 interviews at this stage just because she's done
so many,
Speaker 2 (28:34):
including here at Mamma Mia.
Which we'll play a little bit off in a minute. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Like she has really told her story. So a lot
of people were thinking like, why go back for like
another sip from the well to this story? So there's
a lot of questions and commentary around whether or not
this TV show should have been made and should it exist.
I think we both have strong feelings on that, and
there's a lot of strong feelings from the public, which
is what we're gonna get into next.
(28:58):
So you say the Amanda Knox case so closely now,
you've watched the full drama series. I know you've seen
all of the commentary from people who've watched it and
from the families involved. What's your thought on whether or
not this TV show should exist?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I'm so conflicted. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (29:12):
me too. Isn't that interesting? Even after everything we've consumed,
usually at this stage of the game, I would have
a very clear view of whether or not.
Not something like this should have been made, but like
everything else with this story, it's like
very complex.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is. And I think the biggest thing is that
this will never be Meredith Kercher's story. And that is
what is touched on a little bit in the twisted
tale of Amanda Knox, that it should be about a
beautiful young woman whose life was cut tragically short. And
it should be about the man who did that to
her and the fact that he is spending his life
(29:46):
behind bars, although I believe he's been released now. So,
Why is it never about Meredith? Why is it always
about Amanda? And she acknowledges that, and she acknowledges that
Meredith is now essentially her story. But for the family
of Meredith, like, I can fully understand why they have
responded the way they have. Like, why are we doing
this again? Why do we keep talking about this story
like this is Amanda's story?
(30:08):
But also, if you put yourself in Amanda's shoes and
someone falsely accused me of murder, sent me to prison,
and really dragged my name through the mud for years
and years and years, a legacy that she still lives
with to this day, there are still legions of people
who do not believe her. They believe that she is guilty.
And they will tell her. And there is a part
(30:31):
in the series where she starts to like, understand the
new technology that she's come back into the world to see,
and
The messages she starts to get are pretty intense, and,
you know, there were death threats and, you know, telling
her to take her own life. And like, that's an
intense thing to deal with all the time. So would I,
in Amanda's shoes, want to keep telling my story so
(30:52):
that people understand me better and who understand the situation better,
I guess I get it from her perspective and wanting
to set the record straight over and over and over
when people still don't believe you. Like, I really understand that.
But I just, I feel for Meredith's family whose story
just gets overlooked, misunderstood, and there are still people even
(31:15):
in Meredith's family who aren't sure what they believe either.
So to see Amanda also profiting from this, like, that's
hard for them to see and hard for them to take.
So I'm still really conflicted. I get it, but I
don't want to see Meredith again become the victim.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, and that's the difficult thing of watching it is
that Meredith Kercher's family were contacted in the lead up
to the show, like before it went into production, and
they told production they wanted nothing to do with it,
which was expected, so they pushed on ahead without it.
But it was more so when the show was released
and the fact that it's been coming out weekly, and
even the lead up to that with Amanda, like, releasing
a podcast and, and doing a lot of press around
(31:52):
that and seeing all those headlines come up again. And
the response from the family was always, Please don't do this,
please don't drag this up again, please don't drag her
name in front of the world again.
And it's something that Amanda Knox does talk about quite
a bit. And something I always, when I'm watching interviews
with her, find interesting is that she'll often say to
the interviewer, You know my name, and you know Meredith's name,
but do you know the name of the man who
actually committed the crime? And a lot of the time
(32:14):
people don't know his name, and they don't know his
story or his face or anything because he's not a
young woman and that's not an exciting part of the case.
But in terms of why they made it, Amanda Knox
has always said that it's because she gave birth to
a daughter and
And then suddenly she realized that her daughter would be
growing up in a world where so many people still
thought she was guilty of murder and that she's
Speaker 2 (32:35):
inheriting a legacy.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Exactly. And it's almost like reading between the lines of
listening to Amanda speak about this is that it's almost
like her last ditch effort to clear her name through
drama because she knows how much, especially at this point
in time right now, how much the world responds to
drama in a way that we sometimes don't respond to
an interview or an article.
So she's written the memoirs, she's done press tours so
(32:58):
many times over the years, she's done the podcast, so
many people have released information about it.
And yet she only saw a drama as the way
to clear her name, essentially. And maybe it's because she
could have complete control over the narrative that in a way,
you can't have with even a memoir or something, because
a memoir, you're just reading the same voice all the
way through. With the TV show, you're seeing all of
(33:19):
these actors relive those moments. And like we're saying, it
was very sensory heavy show. So you almost feel like
you've
Gone through it with her. And so that idea was
like people would watch the show and it's so through
her eyes that you would come out of it believing her.
And the subtext I think of all her interviews is
that she thought that was worth bringing it up again,
as like one last attempt to clear her name.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
And we are seeing this real moment for these stories
being told in this manner. So
Like the Menendez brothers, for example, I had reported on
their story as a journalist, many times over the years
as they've kind of attempted to be free. And I
had a very pre-formed opinion of whether I thought what
(34:02):
they did was done purely for greed, which is what
they'd been positioned as in the media and by the prosecution.
And then when you see their stories dramatized, and you
understand a little bit more about what was going on
behind closed doors, and you understand that, you know, maybe
as children, they were abused, and so, you know, you
understand the crime a little bit better, and now there
(34:24):
are calls for their freedom, even though they are not
free as of us recording this podcast. But I can
understand why Amanda might want to also be a part
of this moment where people are reclaiming their own narrative.
Especially when it's through a drama that can take you
to the place and the time and can put you
in the situation. And like, if I was 20 in
a foreign country where I don't speak the language, was
(34:48):
accused of a terrible, terrible crime, and have no family support,
and not understand what's happening to me, and finding myself
in jail, not even understanding what I've signed, because the
truth of the matter is she signed a document.
And she didn't even fully understand what it was she
was signing. And so, to put myself in that position, like,
(35:10):
that would be terrifying. And I don't think you get that,
you're right. When you listen to her speak on a
podcast or you read her memoir, it doesn't put you
in the time and place, and it doesn't make you
experience that alongside her. And I think it's actually kind
of smart because I did legitimately change my view.
In this case, after
Speaker 1 (35:27):
watching this. Yeah, yeah, to an extent. And again, it's
just nothing kind of pulls you in like a drama.
It's like we saw this year with Apple cider vinegar
and Belle Gibson. Like, a lot of people knew that story.
They knew that she had lied about having cancer, but
there was this renewed kind of rally behind the victims
and the journalists involved and everything worldwide, in a way
that hadn't happened, even when we saw Belle Gibson giving
these interviews. And I think with the drama too, it's
(35:48):
so many elements of you.
To control it, but also like the choice of actress,
like with Grace Van Patten, who gives this very kind
of vulnerable performance, and she's acting in a way that
we didn't, at least in the clips we saw, and
this was like a very strategic thing from the production
team from her, because she's meant to be playing a
woman who's been thrust into this, and so we don't
(36:09):
see her acting for the cameras in the way that
people think Amanda Knox did.
And a lot of effort went into casting the exact
right person for that role, which you can imagine because
they didn't want to cast an actress who might be
almost painted with the same brush that Amanda Knox is. Like,
is she seen as a sexualized actress? What other roles
has she played? Will she come across as like, not
(36:29):
sympathetic and vulnerable enough? And so there was this real
call to find a very vulnerable looking actress, which I
think Grace Van Patten, who most people
I know from the TV show Tell Me Lies is
kind of almost known for being that type of character
actress where she often plays the more subdued, kind of
almost victim character. And it was meant to be Margaret
Crawley originally. She was attached and they moved her out
(36:50):
and put her into this role. But I think the
other interesting thing is who else is involved behind the
scenes of this production, which is Monica Lewinsky,
Speaker 2 (36:56):
which was a real surprise when I saw them sitting
on an American TV.
Show on the couch next to each other. I'm like, Oh,
that's an interesting lineup of guests, and didn't realize they
were talking about the exact same their co-project
Speaker 1 (37:06):
they've been working on. So they met in 2017. They
were both speaking at an event, and Amanda said that
she was like getting quite overcome and quite stressed about
publicly speaking, but also just everything about reliving her story
over and over again. And she said she went to
the green room and she was stressing out, and Monica
Lewinsky came in.
And they very instantly bonded, shared stories. Monica Lewinsky was
(37:27):
giving her tips on how to do this next part
of being in the public eye. I've spent the majority
of my adult life, uh, feeling like no one cared
what I had to say, and, um, anything I did
say was always twisted against me, and then I find
myself invited to go give a talk for the first
time ever, and I'm utterly terrified.
(37:48):
I also learned that someone else is going to be
speaking at this uh this event and it happens to
be the one and only Monica Lewinsky whose Vanity Fair
articles and whose TED Talks have given me hope that
there might be a path forward in my life. And
so I asked the organizer if I could please, please,
(38:09):
please meet her. I think Amanda was the highlight of
that event that day, and people were so
I think they were just so impressed by you, which
I was when we first met and I had so
much compassion for you and um and it really was
kind of the beginning of
(38:30):
Us knowing each other. Monica Lewinsky, for anyone who doesn't know,
in the late 1990s was working in the White House
and said that she had had an affair with then
President Bill Clinton and was absolutely, there's no other way
to put it, slut shamed. And, and painted to be
a liar and all of these things.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
She seduced the
president
Speaker 1 (38:49):
and became not just a huge villain and this hatred
of the world, but also just became
a mockery and, and just basically the entire world turned
against her. And you talk about people being canceled, but
they don't really get canceled, but she was really canceled.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Like a lot of jokes for like decades after that occurred.
And she has been the epitome of reclaiming the narrative.
And that's where social media has actually been the most
amazing thing for some people because she took to then Twitter,
which is now X, and
And we finally got to know who Monica Lewinsky actually
is and is not just this vixen intern who happened to,
(39:29):
you know, seduce the most powerful man in the world.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Because it did come out that she was telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, and she also has had a hand in documentaries
about that situation where she has been actually asked about
those experiences and has told them exactly what happened.
And so she's been able to really turn around, being
the butt of every late night host joke for a
long time. And she talks about her mom sitting next
to her bed and like begging her not to take
(39:57):
her own life because of just how bad it got
for her in the late 90s and early 2000s. And
so she is now thriving because she's been able to
tell her story and be believed. So that's, it makes
sense now that the two of them are working together on.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
And that's why Monica wanted to be involved in the
Amanda Knox in the televised version of her story. She said,
I can't relate to being falsely accused of a crime
like that because of her was a different situation. It
was more of a situation of public shaming. And she's like,
and I can't relate to being falsely in prison, but
I do know what it's like to have the world
turn against you and have your story not be your own.
And I think even though she had hard evidence to
(40:35):
show that what she said about the president and everything
that happened to her afterwards was true.
A lot of people still saw her, as you're saying,
in a different light. So when they did the Monica
Lewinsky TV series, when Beanie Feldstein played her, it's again,
that whole thing of drama, reshaping a narrative in the
way that factual information can't was that brought a whole
new audience over to her side. So I think that's
(40:56):
why she was so instrumental on this Amanda Knox series
of being an executive producer and being able to say, like,
tell this part of the story, or don't tell this part,
or even, like, we don't know the extent of it,
but I think she would even be.
coaching her through the press around it and everything to
sort of shape it as like the perfect kind of
reclaiming of her story. Because in the series, Amanda does
become this strong hero. Like, she almost becomes like a
(41:17):
young adult, like a Katniss Everdeen or something towards the end,
and off you felt that it was done in a
very careful way for her to at first be a victim,
and then they kind of made her into this heroine, like,
she's not just clearing her own name, but she's standing
up against the system.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
She's becoming an advocate for people who've been.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
And she's walking into the courtroom and saying, like, I
speak the language. I do this, I've done the work.
And then we see her coming back into the prison
and everyone applauding for her and cheering for her and
her being seen as this savior. OK,
Speaker 2 (41:45):
hold
that thought, Laura Brodnick, because I think what really shook
me a little bit watching this is that break from
reality into fantasy that happens quite regularly throughout the entire series.
I want to get your take on exactly why that
is and what is happening next.
So, as we mentioned just before the break, then, if
you're watching this series, you would have noticed that sometimes
(42:08):
it's Amanda telling her story and she does a little
bit of that via narration, which I know some people despise.
I actually quite like it.
But then it'll cut to really fanciful scenes. In one,
she's a child and her teddy bears are applauding her
for performing a little at home dance, and often it's like,
there's one in a library where she's like floating around
(42:30):
on the ladder that goes up and rolls around. Like,
it just, it's this weird pull from reality into fantasy.
What is that
about?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, it's interesting to bring up because that is the
part of the show that a lot of critics and
viewers had the most issue with.
Because a lot of what people gave the show a
pass for is the fact that they said Amanda was
trying to tell her story and also honor Meredith's story,
and we see a bit of a montage of Meredith
at the end as a sort of like, just remember,
she's at the center of this. But a lot of
(42:59):
people feel that that feels very disingenuous when they also
added these fantasy elements to it. But it was a
very specific choice because Amanda Knox and the team said
that they wanted to add all these facets of magical realism.
And magical realism, if you're not
Across the whole fantasy kind of world. Like we have
high fantasy, which is a whole world being recreated with
its whole different ways of being in its own rules.
(43:21):
And then you have more of like fantasy, which is
very kind of old school, like a whole world that's
touched by magic, and then you have magical realism, which
is a story that takes place in our world as
it is now, and there's one tiny string of magic,
and that's what we kind of see from Amanda's point
of view. And they wanted to do that. It's interesting
because at the top of the series, you almost feel
like you're
(43:41):
Watching like a bit of an Italian kind of romantic drama.
And that's very deliberate from them because they wanted to
show that it's all about putting you in Amanda's mind.
And in her mind, at the start of the show,
when we meet her, she is a young woman in Italy,
having adventure and having a new romance and how intoxicating
that is. And they wanted to show that as the
story went along, those moments where you see the teddy
(44:03):
bears applauding her or her floating. One is that they're
trying to make a little homage to some movies, like
an Amelie or a pulp fiction.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Emily that her and Raffaeli watched the night of Meredith's murder,
Speaker 1 (44:13):
which apparently is the movie they watched that night. And
there's a kind of a few fanciful scenes in that movie,
but they took it the next step higher. And this
is where I think maybe I take issue with some critics,
is like, you can't have a story that is about
telling this huge truth that's based on a rape and
murder and frame yourself as Emily. Like they're two very
different methods of storytelling
Speaker 2 (44:33):
clashed.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
It's jarring,
Speaker 2 (44:35):
isn't it? It is jarring and it's, it's.
Hard, especially when you're looking at it from a true
crime perspective, because, like, you are, as you said earlier,
pulled into this world, which is really intense and it
feels like you're being interrogated or you're in prison with
her and you're so, like, you lose all hope at
some stages, and then, you know, it's all like butterflies
and fairies, and it feels like, oh my God, where
(44:57):
is my brain now supposed to take
that?
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah, and I would have probably maybe liked it more
as a storytelling device if maybe you can see her
from the beginning to the end as she's in prison.
For so many years, if you maybe saw her start
to lose her grip on reality as the show goes
along and she starts having some sort of illusion to that. Yeah,
maybe something, cause like, you do hear of people in
these situations that things like that happen, that their mental
(45:20):
state becomes so intensified that they do start hallucinating or
recreating stories. But the way it's threaded through, it's to
show that she's almost an otherworldly being, and they're trying
to show that she has this very fanciful mind. She's
not like other people, which is why
She didn't react in a certain way. So it all
comes that full circle of trying to show her innocence.
But I think it comes across as a little messy
(45:41):
and a little self-indulgent, and self-indulgent is what a lot
of people have labeled the
series.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
And you really can't be self-indulgent when you're trying to
tell your story in the midst of the murder of
someone who you called a friend. Like, that is hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (45:53):
it's, it's almost the thing is, like, they did what
they set out to do, which I find the interesting
thing too. Like, I find it difficult to sit down
and watch a series like this and say, but you
should have told this or you should.
told that. Like, it's the Amanda Knox story is kind
of what it's meant to be. What I think we
need is we need someone to go and make more
of a Meredith Kerch story, which, to be honest, I
(46:14):
don't think I've seen anything. I know a lot about
her life, but I don't think there's anything that's attributed
completely to her where we would see a dramatization of like,
her childhood, her life, her and even
Speaker 2 (46:23):
in this, we don't even see a dramatization of her murder.
We only see Amanda turn up after the
fact.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah. And I guess like the thinking from the writer's
team is that they
Didn't want to, they obviously have to use her name
in her story because it's so wrapped up in Amanda,
but they didn't want it to be overly gory and
see that as kind of like a voyeurism into her murder,
which so much of true crime can be if done
the wrong way. It can
Speaker 2 (46:45):
be, but also, like, when we're talking about the rape
and murder of a young woman, it feels like that
should be given a bit more gravitas than it has. Like,
it wasn't, we weren't given a moment to mourn Meredith
at all during this whole thing. And maybe that's the point,
because a
Amanda also wasn't given an opportunity to mourn her friend. Like,
maybe that's the reason for that. But myself as, you know,
(47:06):
the voyeur looking in on this, I felt like Meredith
was this kind of otherworldly character who you never really
get to
know.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yeah, she's like a faceless victim, almost in a story
that is about the end of her life, but also
her life and her, and I know there's sometimes like
in the, they do like cut to looking at her
family members and cut to looking at her friends. And
so you get, you get a little bit of her
life through their reaction.
But not a lot. And I guess it's also at
the top of the show, because it's told through Amanda's perspective,
and though it's dramatized, it very much shows her and
(47:37):
Meredith becoming friends and this closeness between them, which if
you listen to any of Meredith's friends or family, they
say that they weren't close friends, they didn't get along,
that um, Meredith felt very uneasy about her. And something
about that I find almost more troubling.
Because not showing the murder and the impact of the
rape is definitely not the best choice, but also rewriting
(47:59):
this woman.
To have this friendship she didn't have to make the
character of Amanda look more sympathetic, is also a disservice
to her, I think. Cause you're
Speaker 2 (48:08):
just. But again, this is from Amanda's perspective, and
Speaker 1 (48:11):
she
says they were friends, yeah. So that, that's the hard
I think, the blurring line of I almost wish they
had made it a bit more, almost a bit more
fanciful and a bit more of a series rather than
like a beat by beat retelling of an event, because
it makes it even harder to kind of separate fact
and fiction because it's so meshed
Speaker 2 (48:28):
together. It is really mesh.
Together. And if you do want the answer to this question,
did Amanda return to Italy many years later, after she'd
married Christopher Robinson and had a little baby girl, who
we talked about earlier, to meet with Mignini, who is,
she calls him my prosecutor, who, the man who investigated
and then prosecuted the case. Yes, she did do that.
(48:49):
She did return to Italy, she did have a conversation
with him. We only know from Amanda's perspective what that
conversation looks like. And then there is a scene at
the end, which makes it look like Mignini.
Goes to confession. We don't know if that's true. But
the priest who Amanda spoke to in jail and who
also happened to be Mignini's childhood priest, and who helped
(49:09):
bring them together at the end, he's a real person.
And so maybe that did happen. Maybe that did. Who knows?
But yeah, there's a lot of blurring of lines here,
but you just got to remember when you're going to
watch this, it is from Amanda's perspective. It's her narrative,
it's her story. It's not Meredith's story. That's a story
we're still
yet to hear.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
And Amanda has actually addressed
What her relationship with Meredith Kercher's family looks like now
on Mamma Mia's No Filter podcast, talking to Kate Lanbrook and,
and kind of explaining where she sits with the family now.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Thanks so
much for listening to this very special crossover episode of
the Spiel and True Crime Conversations. The spiel is produced
by Monisha Iswaran, and True Crime Conversations is produced by
Talie Blackman. Audio production for this episode was done by
Scott Stronick with video production by Julian Rosario. Bye. We
should do this again one day.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
We should. Stay tuned for another crossover.
Yeah.
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