Personally, I think what Amanda’s family went through was more difficult, to have your child falsely imprisoned in a foreign country...It’s constant uncertainty. At least if your child is murdered, you know they aren’t coming back, and you can kind of begin to move on. It’s hard to compare. Both are incredibly…

“Also, she didn’t just blame someone, she chose a black man.”

Oh yes. The whole thing was sensationalized beyond belief. People were predisposed to think she was guilty. But many still think she is for reasons like, “I can just see evil in her eyes.”

Studies have shown that people will have a false memory when they are questioned this way. Amanda didn’t randomly name Patrick, the police kept pressing her about him, until she finally agreed with them.

Yes, and that is why I was a little hesitant to post — at the time, whenever somebody would say, “Uh hey, maybe she is innocent?” Eighty buhjillion freaked-out Brits would appear saying things like “WEEL I HOPE SOMEONE KILLS YOU AND LETS SEE HOW YER MUM LIKES IT!!!!!!!!! YER DEVIL-FUCKING GIRLFRIEND FOXY KNOXY IS A…

I don’t think they are villains at all! Being bothered by something doesn’t mean that I think they are evil. They are devastated. But so were Amanda and her family. They did not lose as much as Meredith’s parents, but their pain and loss are real. And to have your murdered friend’s parents think you are responsible in…

Agreed. I think a lot of people have this idea of what someone who is innocent should look like, and she didn’t fit it. She did things that people don’t expect like accusing someone else, the inappropriate attire, the cartwheels. I absolutely think she is innocent, and I also think that none of us can predict what we…

If the police were interrogating me for something I hadn’t done and wouldn’t relent until I gave them some other plausible explanation, I might break at some point and resort to blaming someone else, as well. I can’t really put myself in her shoes and I imagine the whole thing was terrifying. It’s unfortunate and very…

Sure, sure, I can understand that. Counterpoint: 13 hours of questioning, no lawyer, no translator, lies about evidence and witnesses, and an insistence that she *imagine* what might have happened to fit their narrative, after her own account of her whereabouts was shot down again and again.

I’d be more understanding if Kercher’s murder remained unsolved, because I imagine it’s psychologically more difficult to give up the idea that a certain person is responsible when you have no idea who is, but they DO know who did it, and he is in prison. Justice has been served in this situation. A person has been…

I think that the people who do followed the story at the beginning and have put a lot of energy into believing that she did it, so they don’t want to change their mind. It was also a really big deal in Europe when it was fresh but didn’t become that big in the United States until a while later when it was obviously a…

That’s what is kind of crazy to me. At this point, it’s known there was a total lack of DNA evidence to implicate her (other than the normal DNA one would leave through basic use of an apartment they live in), the guy whose DNA was everywhere has confessed to it... All the stuff piled on top of it is so improbable, I…

YES. I was an American living in London during the time of the initial murder, arrests, trials, and the British press was INSANE. And it was astonishing to me how they really took sides and were very emotional in accusations with little or terrible evidence. (Obviously the US has now joined the race to the bottom in…

They arrested and convicted geologists of manslaughter for not predicting a fucking earthquake! Fortunately it was overturned. My husband, whose research involves fault zones, considered doing a sabbatical in Italy — I was so down to hang out there for a year! — but he was very turned off after that fiasco.

Another great source is the non-fiction book Monster of Florence; it’s written by a popular American novelist and an Italian journalist. It’s batshit insane— and all entirely true— and it features the exact same police leadership, city and prosecutor as the Knox case.

I may get attacked for this, but the British press coverage, and the response of the readership, was just as baffling/terrifying as the Italian legal system. It looked at the time like some weird echo chamber was created between the British tabloid press and the Italian courts, goading each other and whipping each…

As someone who is socially awkward at times, especially in stressful or exhausting situations, I kind of understand those cartwheels.

I have not forgotten Meredith, but the way her parents were so certain of Knox’s guilt — and are to this day — in spite of a total lack of believable motive and evidence really bothers me.

The wikipedia article is an okay place to start.

I mean, the whole time they had the guy who did it, they just wanted to pick on an American too. The Italian justice system is totally fucked up. They accept astrology as evidence! They truly believe in Satanic cults, stuff that’s been disproved in most civilized nations for decades. Remember the Satanic Panic? Italy…