The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is a new cable movie dramatizing the tortuous persecution of an American student in Italy that began in 2007. It took a full eight years for the Italian justice system to right its terrible wrong.
Amanda Knox (right) and her Italian boyfriend of five days spent four years in prison for the murder of Amanda’s English roommate in Perugia, northern Italy. They spent another four years on parole awaiting appeals. Many of us recall the media blitz surrounding the murder and trials, often in shock at the sensational revelations of sex-fueled relations and the gruesome murder. All the while the real murderer sat in an Italian jail with nary a media spotlight. Released in 2021 after his sentence was reduced, Rudy Guede, a native of the Ivory Coast in Italy since he was 5, is now on trial for sexual assault, mistreatment and stalking of a 25-year-old Italian woman he met while on parole.
Netflix has a 2015 documentary that follows the whole sordid tale of what I consider a shameful episode of shoddy Italian police work and blatant cultural prejudice. Amanda summed up the absurdity of the Italian persecution: that she and her boyfriend Raffaele coaxed Rudy, a man neither knew, to gang rape her roommate and then slit her throat in some ritual orgy. Unfortunately, both Amanda and Raffaele were easily intimated by the police, made even easier by their youth (she 20, he 23) and the absence of an attorney. The police collected DNA in such a chaotic manner that later Italian forensic experts eventually cleared the couple. But it was after four years in prison!
Moral outrage by the Italian police and press fueled this Salem Witch Trial alla italiana. Amanda was quite promiscuous. Italians aren’t prudes but the American college girl with the light brown hair and blue eyes made out with Raffaele in public even while police were at the crime scene. The Italian press had a field day labelling Amanda “Foxy Knoxy.” While in lock-up the police had her believe she was HIV-positive and asked her to list all her encounters. She admitted to seven with details. Soon, the diary was leaked to press. She did not have HIV.
Amanda became the poster girl of American decadence. Every reference in the press and by gossip alluded to Amanda’s loose morals, which confirmed the Italian public’s opinion that she was capable of seduction and orgiastic murder.
Meanwhile, the case against Rudy Guede was piling up. A petty thief and drug dealer, he admitted he was in the victim’s room at the time of the attack. His DNA, along with the victim’s blood, was found on her purse. His shoe prints, set in the victim’s blood, were found in the bedroom and in the hallway leading out the front door. His bloody handprint was found on a pillowcase underneath her body. Most importantly, Guede’s DNA was found inside the victim’s body. He even left a bowel movement unflushed in the toilet.
His trial was swift but of lesser interest to the media because the prosecutor still painted Rudy as only an accomplice in Amanda’s sexual ritual. Rudy’s 30-year sentence was eventually reduced to 13 while the wicked witch of the West (Seattle) received all the attention. Shameful doesn’t begin to describe the witch hunt carried on by the Perugia police and prosecutor Giuliano Mignini.
Amanda Knox has now matured and strangely come to terms with the prosecutor who hounded her. She is married with two children, living back in Seattle – a place of very liberal norms. The Hulu movie was co-produced by Amanda and a new-found associate, Monica Lewinsky. -JLM
There are also the Italian and British sides of the story. What you are describing is the account given by biased American media. This article by an American journalist described how the whole story was distorted by American media: https://medium.com/@monicah428/did-american-media-get-it-wrong-468faa08e542
The link you provide does not address the evidence in the case, only the differences between Italian and American judicial systems. What’s the point?
The point is that it was not a witch trial. It was a legitimate judicial proceeding. There were plenty of circumstantial evidences. Eventually, she was acquitted for the murder charge, not the slander charge. Renowned scholar Alan Dershowitz said “it’s a case of the kind that would have resulted probably in a conviction in most courts in America.”
The hard evidence cleared Amanda and Raffaele. It was the media and Mignini’s obsession with Amanda’s morals that made it a witch trial. Mignini’s first visit to the crime scene had him believing a woman killed the victim because “only a female would cover the victim with a blanket after murdering her.” Don’t know the full context of Dershowitz’s opinion. He may believe in the emotional angle, too.
I am inclined to agree with Meridionalissimo. I have friends in Perugia who, like most Perugini, followed the case closely and they all thought Knox was guilty. If you listen to Knox on American interviews she comes across as insincere and smug. This proves nothing, of course, but neither does John Mancini’s argument.
So, she was guilty of smugness and insincerity? The whole case was handled in a slipshod manner by the police and prosecutors – Italian experts and the high court agreed. Come on guys!