Amanda Knox has revealed she felt ‘utterly exploited’ by true crime – and says her three year old daughter has started asking questions about about the Meredith Kercher murder.
The mother-of-two, 37, spoke to journalist Billy Binion about her views on true crime for Reason, after her story became one of the biggest cases around the world in 2007 when she was accused of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, while studying abroad in Italy.
Despite mishandled DNA, a coerced confession, and a lack of credible evidence, Amanda was convicted and spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before being exonerated in 2015.
Amanda, who is now an activist, writer and journalist, revealed her three year old daughter Eureka, who she shares with husband Christopher Robinson, has now started asking questions about her case.
She said: ‘My daughter is three now and she’s just getting to the point where she’s asking questions, because you know my past is not a hidden thing, and occasionally it comes up and sometimes.
‘She likes it when I tell her a story so she’ll be like tell me a story about Bluey tell me a story about the Little Mermaid sometimes she asks me to tell the story of Mama going to Italy.
‘I just have to say ”well mama went to Italy and something really, really bad happened someone hurt her friend and then then mama was hurt too”, and my daughter says ”why” and I’m like ”I don’t know”.
Following a 2011 film for US television, her 2013 memoir, Waiting to be Heard, and a 2016 Netflix documentary, Amanda is now co-producing an eight-part series for Hulu about her path to freedom.
Amanda Knox revealed she felt ‘utterly exploited’ by true crime and says her three year old daughter has started asking questions about about her case, while speaking to journalist Billy Binion for Reason
However Amanda revealed she has felt ‘utterly exploited’ by true crime saying victims often have no say in how their stories are told.
She explained: ‘I was not a true crime person before I became the subject of a true crime phenomenon.
‘What I see today which troubles me is that the worst experiences of people’s lives are not just in the public interest or are talked about for the sake of you know journalistic Integrity reasons it’s entertainment and so often the people who have the most at stake in whether and how those stories are told have absolutely no say about it.
‘In the history of true crime it was even sort of looked down upon the idea that somebody who is at the center of a horrific story could have anything objective or valuable input to provide.
‘I have rebelled against this idea that someone like me has nothing valuable to say or to offer when it comes to how my own story is told.’
Amanda, who hosts podcast called Labyrinths, said it’s ‘obviously exploitative’ for people to tell her story without consulting her.
She said: ‘I think one of the really dangerous positions that people like myself get put into is when content creators come to us and say we’re going to be making a podcast or a documentary or a movie based on your story, we’re gonna do it whether you’re involved or not, so you might as well.’
She added she only agreed to make a Netflix documentary examining her case because the directors informed her ahead of production that the show would only be made if she spoke to them.
Amanda, who is now an activist, writer and journalist, revealed her three year old daughter Eureka, who she shares with husband Christopher Robinson, has now started asking questions about her case
Amanda arriving at court in Perugia, charged with the alleged sex-murder of her British housemate in the Italian university town of Perugia
Amanda being escorted by Italian penitentiary police officers to Perugia’s court, in Italy in 2008
Meredith was found dead on the floor of her bedroom in 2007
Speaking about co-producing the new Hulu drama about Meredith Kercher’s murder in Perugia, she said: ‘I am finding myself in the extremely privileged and rare position of being a subject who has a say and I’m taking that very seriously and I’m really proud of the work we’re doing.’
The American author, who has a book coming out in March called Free, also discussed the psychological impact of being imprisoned for something she didn’t do.
She said: ‘It’s both horrifically tragically inhumane and utterly banal. A single day will last forever but then all of a sudden you’ll blink and months of your life are gone and you’re just like ”when did that happen” so the experience of time is very bizarre in prison and it’s one of the more difficult things to come back into the world with.’
‘I would argue that the indignities that so many people face in prison guilty or innocent alike are not doing any of us any good.’
Amanda, daughter Eureka and husband Christopher Robinson on a hike together in 2022
More than a decade after the fateful day that Amanda was undeservingly found guilty of murder
Amanda, who was 20 years old at the time, and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were first blamed for the crime, and she was sentenced to 26 years in prison
Amanda (seen in 2011) was thrown into the public eye back in 2007 after her roommate Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered
Later, a burglar named Rudy Guede was found guilty for killing Meredith after his fingerprints were found on her belongings and Amanda and Raffaele’s convictions were overturned
Elsewhere Amanda said people have ‘projected Meredith’s tragedy’ onto her because she’s the one who lived.
She claimed people forget that they were both victims of a crime and believe that somehow her ‘pain is less’ because Meredith had her life taken away.
She said: ‘I was an indirect victim of crime before I was a victim of the criminal justice system, my roommate was raped and murdered by a person who broke into our home, that is horrific.
‘I have my life she does not, but does that mean that my life is somehow less valuable or my pain is less because her life was taken away from her, no.
‘What happened to her should never have happened and what happened to me should never have happened. I mean my life is not held hostage by Meredith’s tragedy.
‘People are projecting Meredith’s tragedy onto me because I’m the one who lived lived and got to go home, but a part of me understands, because I have felt that in a way myself.
‘I have felt like me and Meredith both both arrived in Perugia to do the exact same thing and to live the exact same house and we are two sides of the same coin and fate flipped that coin and landed the way it landed, and so a part of me does feel that I carry her ghost within me.
‘I would really love to visit her grave, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that until her family is comfortable with me doing that.’
The real murderer of Meredith was eventually identified as Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, after his DNA was found on her body.
He was sentenced to 16 years before being freed in 2021 as he only needed to serve 13 years due to ‘good behaviour’.
Amanda is now 37 and has two children. She spends her time advocating for criminal justice reform and campaigning against wrongful convictions.
The new series is co-produced by Monica Lewinsky who became well-known for having an affair with the then-American president Bill Clinton – a story which Disney also decided to turn into a television drama.
Series bosses say it tells the ‘true story of how Amanda Knox was wrongfully convicted for the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher and her 16-year odyssey to set herself free’.
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