Imagine having your name associated internationally with a horrible crime, watching yourself on TV reports and in newspapers and magazines as the world wonders if you were involved with a murder you ultimately prove you didn’t commit.
Amanda Knox found herself inside that very kind of living nightmare from 2007 to 2015, when she and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were accused of taking part in the murder of Meredith Kercher, her roommate during a study-abroad program in Italy.
“There are those who believe in my innocence and those who believe in my guilt. There is no in-between.”
The reports of how Kercher died were shocking enough, including the detail that she’d her throat slit; tabloid media in Italy and around the world also quickly added lurid speculation that the murder was part of a bizarre sexual encounter gone wrong. Knox was held for years in an Italian jail, then convicted, acquitted on appeal, then charged again — ultimately getting exonerated by Italy’s supreme court in 2015.
Yet the world has remained fascinated by her story, and she herself has had a hard time adjusting to normal life again because her name is forever associated with the murder.
The fact that her sexual proclivities — including the number of lovers she’d had up to that point — were shared with the world when her prison diaries were linked to the media only compounded her problems.
A new documentary about the case, simply titled “Amanda Knox,” debuts on Netflix and in a limited number of theaters this weekend.
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Weaving extensive news footage with starkly shot interviews with Knox and Sollecito in which they frequently are shot simply staring into the camera in an attempt to make viewers see them as normal human beings, the doc offers a compelling indictment of media in the instant-news-cycle internet age.
The doc, made by directors Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn, is their first feature-length film after a string of shorts. It also gives Knox a high-profile opportunity to tell her side of the story.
“There are those who believe in my innocence and those who believe in my guilt. There is no in-between,” Knox says in a voiceover.
“If I’m guilty, I’m the ultimate figure to fear, because I’m not the obvious one. But on the other hand, if I’m innocent, it means that everyone is vulnerable, and that is everyone’s nightmare. Either I’m a psychopath in sheep’s clothing, or I am you.”
Blackhurst and McGinn were introduced to Knox through a mutual friend a few weeks after she returned to her hometown of Seattle. They were surprised she granted them a meeting, but Kiley realized they offered her a unique opportunity to share her thoughts and move on.
How Knox was ever seriously accused in the first place defies reasoning. A third man named Rudy Guede, who had a criminal record of break-ins and robberies, was hanging out with Knox and Sollecito on the night of the murder and sought a separate “fast-track” trial for the crime. He received a conviction and a 16-year prison sentence for it.
But as the movie reveals, the idea of an American girl caught up in a sexy criminal trial in a foreign nation was too much for the world to resist. While the doc never mentions Monica Lewinsky and Amy Fisher by name, the notoriety that will likely hound Knox for the rest of her life was fueled by a world in which high-profile trials have become exercises in entertainment as much or more than they are intended to find justice.
The freelance journalist who had the most inside scoops along the way, Nick Pisa (who was writing for the British newspaper Daily Mail), points out that one way to discern Knox’s true moral character would come from how she conducted her life after her ultimate acquittal. Would she seek to exploit her eight years of notoriety and cash in with endless talk-show appearances and money-making schemes — or find a noble way to conduct her life?
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She did write a 2012 memoir after her initial release from an Italian prison, but for the most part, she has faded into as much anonymity as she can afford herself. She writes for a small Seattle-area newspaper, and initially published her stories under a pseudonym because she wanted her work to speak for itself.
But she also offers up her insights to help others who claim to be wrongfully convicted.
“I’ve healed because other people have reached out to me. Other exonerees, other experts have reached out to me and I feel like it’s my turn now to turn the attention toward them,” Knox said in a Thursday morning interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“To have this negative thing that happened to me and the attention put on me put toward them because their stories are important and I don’t think we quite recognize that yet.”
Yet it was another comment to “GMA” that tells both the sad reality of her situation and the strength of her desire for justice: “I’m going to fight this to the very end.”
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