Amanda Knox’s conviction Wednesday in the Italian Supreme Court for slander took her by surprise, she said on her podcast released a day after the verdict.
The Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome found Knox, 36, guilty of slandering her former boss, bar owner Patrick Lumumba, whom she says she was coerced into accusing Knox’s 21-year-old roommate and a fellow exchange student at the time of murder for the 2007 killing of Meredith Kercher,
“I really don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not sure if the judge was interested in what I had to say,” Knox said in a recording before the verdict was read aloud Wednesday for her podcast called “Labyrinths.” She noted that the number of times the judge looked away from her while she read her statement aloud “was concerning.”
“I feel sick. I really hope that it goes well,” Knox added. “It would be super, super meaningful to me to be recognized as innocent because this charge is what everyone points to say I got away with murder because they say an innocent person wouldn’t have been found guilty of slander.”
AMANDA KNOX RE-CONVICTED OF SLANDER IN ITALY OVER ROOMMATE’S 2007 KILLING
Amanda Knox reacts on the day of the verdict in the slander case in an Italian court in Florence, Italy, June 5, 2024. (Claudia Greco/Reuters)
In another recording after the verdict, when she and husband Christopher Robinson were driving away from Florence, Knox said she felt “flabbergasted.”
“I’m still flabbergasted that they even think anything I said in that was accusatory. I would’ve been and was frankly astonished that anyone could possibly find me guilty of willingly and knowingly accusing an innocent man of a crime,” Knox said.
She added later she felt “a combination of angry and numb and just flabbergasted,” like she was “in hostile territory.”
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Amanda Knox arrives flanked by husband Christopher Robinson, right, and lawyer Luca Luparia Donati in Florence, Italy, Wednesday, June 5, 2024. ( Antonio Calanni/AP)
Knox was a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle when she found her roommate dead in their shared house in Perugia Nov. 2, 2007.
She and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, as well as Ivory Coast native Rudy Guede, who had no connection to Knox or Kercher, were all accused in Kercher’s murder. Knox, famously dubbed “Foxy Knoxy” in global headlines after she was named a suspect, and Sollecito spent four years in Italian jail before they were acquitted in 2011 and eventually exonerated in 2015. Guede, whose DNA and fingerprints were found at the crime scene, was released in 2021.
Knox and Sollecito, 20 and 23, respectively, at the time of Kercher’s murder, spent four years in an Italian prison before they were acquitted. (Federico Zirilli/AFP)
The Italian Supreme Court on Wednesday sentenced Knox to three years, though she will not return to prison due to her time already served.
“I guess I just kind of got attached to that hope a little bit.”
“It honestly doesn’t change anything in that I was already convicted and sentenced to three years, and nothing had actually changed,” Knox said on her podcast. “There was only hope that it would change for the better, and I guess I just kind of got attached to that hope a little bit.”
She added later that Italian officials were “wrong” in the slander case.
Amanda Knox, left, and boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of Italy in 2007 outside the rented house where 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher was found dead in Perugia, Italy. (File photo/Associated Press)
“They’re wrong, and they didn’t want to take responsibility. And they just made it worse by making me go through more crap like this,” she said.
Knox also shared the statement she read aloud in court on her website and on X Thursday.
“A lot of people think that the worst night of my life was on December 4th, 2009, when I was convicted of a murder I didn’t commit and sentenced to 26 years in prison. But it wasn’t. The worst night of my life was on November 5, 2007,” her statement began.
“Just days earlier, I had come home to discover the cottage in which I lived transformed into a gruesome crime scene, and my friend and roommate, Meredith, transformed into a victim of horrific violence. I had never been so unanchored and vulnerable in my life.”
Amanda Knox on the day of the verdict in the slander case in an Italian court in Florence, Italy June 5, 2024. (Claudia Greco/Reuters)
The police questioned her “for hours overnight” on Nov. 5, 2007, in Italian, a language she did not know at the time but has become fluent in over the years.
“They refused to accept my answer that I was with Raffaele at his apartment and I didn’t know who killed Meredith. They asked me the same questions over and over again, calling into question everything I said,” Knox recalled.
“Then the police discovered a text message I had sent to Patrick on November 1st, saying, ‘Ci vediamo piu tardi.’ This was my poor attempt at translating the English expression ‘see you later’ into Italian.”
Knox worked as a bartender at Lumumba’s business at the time of Kercher’s murder.
Rudy Guede, 36, was convicted of 21-year-old Kercher’s rape and murder along with Knox and Knox’s boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, in 2009 and then released in 2020 after serving 13 years of a 30-year term that was later reduced to 16 years. (Federico Zirilli/AFP via Getty/Italian Police, File via AP I Paula Lobo/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty)
“In English, ‘see you later’ means ‘goodbye,’ but the police mistakenly concluded that I had made an appointment to see Patrick the night of the murder, and therefore, that I was lying about my whereabouts and somehow involved with the crime,” Knox said in her statement.
“They insisted that I had met with Patrick and demanded to know what we had done. When I tried to explain that I hadn’t met Patrick, they refused to believe me. Over and over again, they called me a liar. But I was not lying, and I was utterly terrified.”
Sollecito would ultimately change his story, telling police he was not with Knox on the night of Kercher’s murder “and that there was physical proof of my presence at the crime scene connecting me to the crime, neither of which was true,” Knox said in her statement.
Knox was convicted and imprisoned but ultimately acquitted for the murder and sexual assault of her British roommate Meredith Kercher in the university town of Perugia in 2007. (Antonio Calanni)
Police threatened 30 years in jail if Knox didn’t remember who was there the night of the murder. One officer slapped her in the back of the head and demanded she “‘Remember! Remember!'” Knox said in her statement.
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“Eventually, I pieced together an incoherent jumble of memories from many different days — and the police typed up a statement and had me sign it. I had been bullied into submission and was too exhausted and confused to resist. The interrogation was a violation of my human rights. Finally left to myself, I scrambled to try to reassemble my sanity. Even though I was still in a daze, my supposedly recovered memories did not seem accurate, and I realized that I could not stand in front of a jury and testify to the statements I had signed.”
Amanda Knox on the day of the verdict in the slander case outside an Italian court in Florence, Italy June 5, 2024. (Claudia Greco/Reuters)
The document Knox signed implicating Lumumba was addressed in court Wednesday. Knox said the document is “evidence” she was “lied to and abused by the police” at 20 years old.
“I would never knowingly accuse an innocent person, much less a friend, of a grave crime.”
“I could not be the witness against Patrick that the police wanted me to be. I didn’t know who killed Meredith. There was no way for me to know,” Knox said. “Patrick was not just my boss; he was my friend. I would never knowingly accuse an innocent person, much less a friend, of a grave crime.
“Patrick gave me the opportunity to practice Italian by serving customers in his pub. He looked out for me. The day before our arrests, he consoled me for the terrible loss of my friend. I feel terrible that I was not strong enough to resist the pressure from the police, and that he suffered as a result.”
The Italian court’s guilty verdict came after Knox read her statement. Robinson said his wife did not topple over and cry as she did when she was convicted of murder years ago. Instead, Knox remained calm, and the pair “high-tailed it out of Florence.”
Knox still lives in Seattle with her husband and their two children.
