She was accused of murdering her roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison … before she was acquitted.
So why does the case still fascinate people? This is the story of the case against Amanda Knox.
So why does the case still fascinate people? This is the story of the case against Amanda Knox.
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00:00She was accused of murdering her roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison before being acquitted.
00:06This is the story of Amanda Knox.
00:09It was, oh, a woman did it.
00:12And it became sexualized.
00:21I think if you went back to Italy right now, you could ask anyone, say, yeah, she's a killer.
00:31It's November 2nd, 2007, in Perugia, a city in central Italy.
00:37On the first floor of this building, the police make a gruesome discovery.
00:42It's November 2nd, 2007, in Perugia, a city in central Italy.
00:49On the first floor of this building, the police make a gruesome discovery.
01:02Meredith Kircher, a 21-year-old British student, is found dead in her bedroom.
01:07Her body has been stabbed 47 times and had a gaffing wound to the throat.
01:16Her American roommate, Amanda, and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele, were the ones who called the police.
01:22She met this guy, Raffaele Selecito.
01:25She literally had met him like seven days before this crime occurred.
01:31And he was a big hash head, so there was a lot of smoking hash and they were high all the time.
01:38The couple claimed to have spent the night of the murder together at Raffaele's house.
01:42Amanda says she returned the next day to her apartment
01:45and discovered bloodstains in the bathroom that she shared with Meredith.
01:50She'd seen there was some blood on the towel or the bath mat in the bathroom.
01:55Nobody was there and she'd had a shower and then she'd gone back to Raffaele.
02:08As they talked about it, she thought it felt a bit unusual and they tried to call Meredith.
02:20Then they called the police and when the police arrived,
02:23they broke down the door to Meredith's room and that's when the body was discovered.
02:28Please.
02:32Amanda Knox was 20.
02:35She came from a broken home in Seattle and acting in a way that,
02:41let's say Italian girls of that age don't, you know, sex, drugs,
02:48you know, doing yoga exercises in the police station after the roommate was murdered.
02:55She quickly attracted the attention of the prosecutor.
02:59The reason that Amanda Knox was in the frame
03:02was purely on the basis of the theories from the local prosecutor, Magnini.
03:08Magnini's theory was first and then after that,
03:11it was a case of them trying to find any piece of evidence which will then come into that.
03:16He said that the body, Meredith's body, had been covered with a duvet.
03:21As he told me when I interviewed him, this was really clear to him.
03:24He said that a woman must have been involved
03:26because only a woman would cover the body of another woman.
03:30A clue is discovered that backs up Prosecutor Magnini's suspicions.
03:35The police claim to have discovered a knife at Raffaele's home
03:38with Meredith's DNA on the blade and Amanda's DNA on the handle.
03:44A few weeks after the start of the investigation,
03:47a piece of Meredith's bra, which she was wearing on the day of her death,
03:50is found at the crime scene.
03:53It has Raffaele's DNA on it.
03:55The Italian, British and American media go into a frenzy.
04:00This was such a sensational case.
04:03It became like a soccer game or something.
04:06Like the three national interests.
04:09Then it became sexualized.
04:11Then it became a circus of speculation.
04:15Her nickname was Foxy Knoxy.
04:18It was totally distasteful.
04:20It had nothing to do with the death of Meredith Kircher.
04:23It had nothing to do with looking for justice.
04:27Under intense questioning, Amanda accuses Patrick Lumumba,
04:31the owner of the bar where she works, of killing her roommate.
04:36She retracts her statement shortly after.
04:39Because I wasn't sure what my imagination was or what reality was.
04:45At the crime scene, investigators find DNA traces belonging to Rudy Guedi,
04:51a young Ivorian man arrested in Germany.
04:54During his trial, he claims his innocence and accuses Amanda Knox.
04:58I had the chance to look through the window
05:01and see Amanda Knox's trace.
05:05Two years after the murder, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollicito
05:08are on the defendant's bench.
05:10Prosecutor Menini accuses them of killing Meredith Kircher
05:13as part of a macabre sex game.
05:16The three, under the influence of the narcotics,
05:18and probably also of the alcohol,
05:20decide to implement the project of involving Mets
05:24in a serious sexual game.
05:26Meredith was my friend and I didn't hate her.
05:29The idea of taking revenge on someone who has always been kind to me is absurd.
05:35Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollicito are respectively sentenced
05:38to 26 and 25 years in prison.
05:43It was a witch trial, and the prosecutor was a very, very religious man.
05:49Like, hardcore religious.
05:51The focus immediately was on this photogenic woman
05:56and whose presence on the crime scene instantly provoked
06:01this prosecutor's traditional superstitions.
06:05I traveled to Perugia and interviewed him,
06:08but he struck me immediately as somebody who was not interested
06:12in reason and logic and following the evidence.
06:16I just got a feeling of somebody who was detached from reality.
06:19The prosecutor said Knox's DNA was found on the knife's handle,
06:22while the victim's DNA was found on the blade.
06:24The knife was found at Raffaele's house, where Amanda spent loads of time,
06:28so obviously it would have her fingerprints on it.
06:30And the DNA which was found on the blade was so scant and unreliable.
06:36There's no proof to say that that was Meredith's DNA at all.
06:39But importantly, the knife was too big.
06:42It didn't match the injuries that she had on the body.
06:47All this work that was done was done by making a series of mistakes.
06:52Not one mistake, but a series of mistakes.
06:54But you could see images, video images of various people
06:58from different elements of the Italian authorities
07:01walking into the crime scene.
07:03There's video footage of them just smashing the glass on the door
07:07and kicking it in order to try and get in.
07:10It's not light-touch professionalism that you'd imagine to see in other places.
07:15It was quite clear that everything was contaminated.
07:18So anything that they collected from that crime scene was of very, very little use.
07:22Apart from a bloody footprint, which entirely matched the size and shoes
07:26that were worn by Rudy Guerde.
07:30Months before the murders, the summer before the murders,
07:33he was actually doing home breaks.
07:36What he thought were empty offices and houses.
07:39In his first conversation that they taped, Rudy Guerde says,
07:43Amanda had nothing to do with it.
07:45Soon as he got back to Perugia, he started putting her in.
07:54You don't need to have a law degree to understand what's going on.
07:58You don't need to be a lawyer to understand what's going on.
08:02You don't need to have a law degree to understand what was going on there.
08:08When they understood that he was involved, they didn't turn the ship around.
08:14They just continued on.
08:16And they did because there were 20 TV trucks in the piazza.
08:19And they could not get up in front of them and say,
08:22we made a giant mistake here.
08:24It's a process, unfortunately, with unacceptable media pressure.
08:32After four years in an Italian prison,
08:34Amanda Knox is acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kircher.
08:38So is her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
08:42Outside the courthouse, an angry crowd expresses their outrage.
08:47Let her go! Let her go!
08:52I think if you went back to Italy right now, you could ask anyone.
08:56They'll say, yeah, she's a killer. They got her out.
08:59We now respectfully ask you to give Amanda and the rest of our family
09:03our privacy that we need to recover from this horrible ordeal.
09:08Meg has been almost forgotten in all of it.
09:11The media photos aren't really of her.
09:16There's not a lot about what actually happened in the beginning.
09:21So it's very difficult to kind of keep her memory alive.
09:25In 2014, Amanda and Raffaele are once again convicted.
09:29Amanda is sentenced to 28 years in prison,
09:32a sentence even heavier than the first one.
09:36But the following year, they are both acquitted definitively.
09:41Now I just want to go back to living
09:43and forget everything bad that happened to me.
09:47Rudy Gade is now the only person convicted for the murder of Meredith.
09:52He was released from prison in 2021 and still claims his innocence.
09:59I was a smart, psychopathic, dirty and drugged whore.
10:09Guilty and sentenced to death.
10:13Because in the court of public opinion, you are not a human being.
10:19You are an object to be consumed.