Amanda Knox

Amanda Marie Knox (born July 9, 1987) is an American author, activist, and journalist.

Amanda Knox was born July 9, 1987, in Seattle, Washington, the eldest of three daughters born to Edda Mellas, a mathematics teacher originally from Germany, and Curt Knox, a vice president of finance for Macy's.

Knox and her sisters were raised in West Seattle.

Her parents divorced when she was 10 years old, after which her mother remarried to Chris Mellas, an information technology consultant.

Knox first travelled to Italy on a family holiday at the age of 15.

During that first trip to Italy, she visited Rome, Pisa, the Amalfi Coast, and the ruins of Pompeii.

Upon reading Under the Tuscan Sun, which was given to her by her mother, Amanda's interest in the country increased.

Knox graduated from the Seattle Preparatory School in 2005 and then studied linguistics at the University of Washington.

She spent almost four years incarcerated in Italy following her wrongful conviction for the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student with whom she shared an apartment in Perugia.

In 2007, she made the dean's list at the university.

She worked at part-time jobs to fund an academic year in Italy.

Relatives described the 20-year-old Knox as outgoing but unwary.

Her stepfather had strong reservations about her going to Italy that year, as he felt she was still too naïve.

Knox had come to Perugia for its universities and because it had fewer tourists than Florence, a more popular destination for foreign students.

Knox lived in a four-bedroom, ground-floor apartment at Via della Pergola 7 with three other women.

Her flatmates were Kercher (a British exchange student) and two Italian trainee lawyers in their late twenties, one of whom was Filomena Romanelli.

Kercher and Knox moved in on September 10 and 20, 2007, respectively, meeting each other for the first time.

Knox was employed part-time at a bar, Le Chic, which was owned by a Congolese man, Diya Patrick Lumumba.

Kercher's English female friends saw relatively little of Knox, who preferred to socialize with Italians.

Giacomo Silenzi, who lived in a walk-out semi-basement apartment of the building, shared an interest in music with Kercher and Knox and he often visited their apartment.

Returning home at 2 a.m. one night in mid-October, Knox, Kercher, Silenzi, and another basement resident met a basketball court acquaintance of the Italians, Rudy Guede in the basement apartment.

At 4:30 a.m. Kercher left, saying she was going to bed, and Knox followed her out.

Guede spent the rest of the night in the basement.

In their initial trial, in 2009, Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively.

Pre-trial publicity in Italian media, which was repeated by other media worldwide, portrayed Knox in a negative light, leading to complaints that the prosecution was using character assassination tactics.

A guilty verdict at Knox's initial trial and her 26-year sentence caused international controversy, as US forensic experts thought evidence at the crime scene was incompatible with her involvement.

A prolonged legal process, including a successful prosecution appeal against her acquittal at a second-level trial, continued after Knox was freed in 2011.

In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation.

Knox, aged 20 at the time of the murder, called the police after returning to her and Kercher's apartment following a night spent with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and finding Kercher's bedroom door locked and blood in the bathroom.

During the police interrogations that followed, the conduct of which is a matter of dispute, Knox allegedly implicated herself and her employer, Patrick Lumumba, in the murder.

Initially, Knox, Sollecito, and Lumumba were all arrested for Kercher's murder, but Lumumba was soon released due to him having a strong alibi.

A known burglar, Rudy Guede, was arrested a short time later following the discovery of his bloodstained fingerprints on Kercher's possessions.

He was later found guilty of murder in a fast-track trial and was sentenced to a 30-year prison sentence, later reduced to 16 years.

On March 27, 2015, Italy's highest court definitively exonerated Knox and Sollecito.

However, Knox's conviction for committing defamation against Lumumba was upheld by all courts.

On January 14, 2016, Knox was acquitted of defamation for saying she had been struck by policewomen during the interrogation.

Knox subsequently became an author, an activist, and a journalist.

Her memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, became a best seller.

In 2018, she began hosting The Scarlet Letter Reports, a television series which examined the "gendered nature of public shaming".

In December 2020, an Italian court ruled that Guede could complete his term doing community service.