- 10 months ago
Amanda Knox opens up about how her life has changed since her wrongful conviction, from grieving her lost anonymity to finding forgiveness for the prosecutor who put her behind bars. She discusses the challenges of being a public figure, dealing with stalkers and media scrutiny, and how she’s turned her experience into advocacy for criminal justice reform. She also reflects on falling in love with her husband, author Christopher Robinson, and navigating motherhood while protecting her children from the shadow of her past.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00In 2007, two young girls went to go study abroad in Perugia, Italy, and one of us survived
00:06the experience.
00:07So I'm incredibly grateful and lucky to have been the one who got to go home and survive,
00:12the one who lived.
00:13I've described it before as feeling haunted by Meredith, not in that bad way that people
00:20sort of project onto me, more in this like, this benevolent spirit who is reminding me
00:28of the value of life and the privilege it is to live.
00:36There's this moment that I see a lot in true crime, especially in wrongful conviction stories,
00:40where you tell the story of the crime, you tell the story of the trial, you tell the
00:44story of when they got out and the first hamburger they ate the minute they got out of prison,
00:49and then curtains go down and they say, end of story.
00:53And I think that, in fact, that's really where the story of this person's life begins,
00:58is that suddenly they find themselves not having to prove their innocence to the world.
01:03Now what?
01:04And also, what do I do about the fact that I just lived through that?
01:07As someone who went into prison, I was very aware of what it felt like to have your freedom
01:12taken from you.
01:13And I did have this idea in my mind while I was in prison of, I just fantasized of being
01:18able to get my life back.
01:20And I kept thinking, I'm living somebody else's life by mistake, and I just want to
01:27go back home, eat some sushi, and be an anonymous college student again.
01:33And when I came home, I was rudely awakened to the fact that that life no longer existed
01:40for me, not just because of these external forces like paparazzi chasing me down the
01:45street or stalking where I lived or receiving death threats, all of that.
01:50It was the fact that I had changed.
01:52I could no longer be anonymous college student Amanda Knox because I was the girl accused
01:59of murder.
02:00And that was my legacy, and I had to grapple with that.
02:03And it led to me feeling, at first, really isolated and ostracized from other people.
02:09And it led to me making some really horrible mistakes, which I think is an interesting
02:15insight into how trauma has these ripple effects, right?
02:20One young man's decision to break into my home turned into him raping and murdering
02:26my roommate, and then turned me into an indirect crime victim, and then a victim of the criminal
02:30justice system.
02:31And then it just ripples out, and I made mistakes that were informed by that trauma.
02:37And then I had to find my way and realize that what I was experiencing was a human drama,
02:46this drama of trying to figure out who you are and where you belong in the world, who
02:51you belong to, and what is your purpose.
02:56And discovering that has been incredibly powerful for me, but I think also it's made me feel
03:04like I can relate to people again after I had been so, so pushed away and villainized.
03:11Waiting To Be Heard is the story of what happened to me.
03:14Free is what I have done about it.
03:16Over the years, I have had to process everything that happened, and I've realized that this
03:22really extreme and isolating experience that I went through actually connects me to people
03:28in really surprising ways.
03:31Because the challenges that I faced, while they are extreme and not unique, but not very
03:39common, have these lessons about the world and about living and about survival that
03:44are universal to everyone.
03:46It's the story that people didn't expect would matter or that they wouldn't expect from me.
03:54It's not me defending myself.
03:55It's me saying, this is who I am, and this is what I believe.
04:01One of the big threads in Free is my relationship with my prosecutor, Dr. Giuliano Magnini.
04:08He was the one who portrayed me as this girl gone wild who, out of the blue, murdered her
04:13roommate, and his choices rippled through my life.
04:16As a victim of his choices, one of the questions that I just was plagued with was, why?
04:24Why?
04:25Why me?
04:26Why you?
04:27What was happening here that you saw in me, the devil?
04:31I never set out to forgive him.
04:34I think that's an important point to make, is I'm not a person whose faith, for example,
04:41compels them to forgive.
04:45That was not my goal.
04:48My goal was to understand him.
04:51What I discovered over the course of reaching out to him and then talking with him and then
04:55meeting him, I found a real person, not a boogeyman.
04:59As soon as I saw that, I could empathize with him.
05:02As soon as you empathize with someone, you have compassion for them.
05:05I went from being a pawn and powerless in his story and him having all of this agency
05:12over my well-being.
05:15As soon as we met, that flipped, and I realized that his well-being relied on me all along
05:24and that of the two of us, I was the one who held all the power.
05:31That shocked me.
05:35I still get goosebumps thinking about it, how did this person who had such a huge impact
05:45on your life become this gentle, fragile thing in your hands?
05:54How did I inadvertently do that?
05:58Forgiveness is a natural consequence of realizing how fragile and precious another human is.
06:09I immediately sort of stepped into mom mode and I was like, I'm not just forgiving you,
06:14I'm holding you.
06:17I care about you.
06:20That changed everything.
06:23Suddenly I went from feeling utterly powerless to a superhero.
06:28No one could stop me.
06:31That has felt so good.
06:33That is being free.
06:38I was the kind of person who just assumed that bad people go to prison and it's that
06:42simple.
06:43Of course, I was very rudely awakened to realities and not just realities abroad, but also coming
06:50home.
06:51My mom noticed that I was really struggling to process.
06:56I was holding a lot in that I didn't know what to do with.
07:00My mom made the decision that whether I liked it or not, I was going to attend what's called
07:05the Innocence Network Conference, which is a once a year event with all these different
07:09projects that work on innocence cases come together and they bring their exonerees.
07:14This was during a time when I was still on trial, so I was very wary of people.
07:20I was very wary of crowds.
07:21I hated being around strangers.
07:23I felt so utterly uncomfortable, but my mom sort of pushed me through and I was introduced
07:30to a world of people and they were so kind to me.
07:35I'll never forget two things that people said to me during that first conference.
07:39One was walking through those doors, two people, two men came and embraced me and said, you
07:44don't have to worry about a thing, little sister.
07:49Realizing that they knew that the thing that I felt was that anytime I entered a room,
07:56I had to explain myself to people.
07:59It wasn't like I couldn't just be a person in a room.
08:02I was a person in the room who had to justify myself being there.
08:09They made me feel like I belonged somewhere for the first time and then to realize that
08:14they had spent way longer in prison than I had and that there was problems here in the
08:19U.S. as well, really put my own experience into perspective.
08:23Then the other thing that they told me was, thank goodness you were wrongly convicted,
08:29Amanda.
08:30I was like, what?
08:32They were like, no, because before you got wrongly convicted and it made the rounds of
08:37the world, people didn't really believe that it was happening.
08:42Thank goodness.
08:43Sorry for everything you went through, but like, thank goodness you're here because it's
08:46because of you that so many people now believe that this is a real problem.
08:50Gratitude is one of the biggest feelings that I have coming out of this experience.
08:55People think that I'm angry all the time or that I don't trust the police at all or, you
09:03know, or at least think that I'm justified to feel that way.
09:08But I think that I and a lot of exonerees would surprise you by being actually really
09:14well-grounded and really desiring to make peace with the rest of humanity, despite everything
09:20that we've been through.
09:25Recently, I've been trying to clear my name of this last final charge that I was convicted
09:29of in Italy and I failed.
09:32The Supreme Court ruled against me and very likely that is the last chance that I had
09:38to fully clear my name.
09:40And I was clearly struggling with it, right?
09:43Like I was not unmoved.
09:45I was not so Zen that I was unmoved by it.
09:49I was sad.
09:50I was angry.
09:51And when I am experiencing those emotions in relation to what's happening, I allow myself
09:58the grace of feeling those feelings and not judging myself for them.
10:03And so for me, like the way that I can think about all of these things and not stay angry
10:10is remember that so much of what happened to me was not personal to me, right?
10:17Like the person who they accused doesn't exist.
10:22That foxy-noxy, a man-in-ox person doesn't exist.
10:25It is literally a figment of other people's imagination and that's who they wanted to
10:30put in prison.
10:31And I think that that's a really good lesson just for people in general because I think
10:36we're all tempted to get into everyone else's mind and clear things up and say, no, I'm
10:41not that person that you think I am.
10:44And we can't do that.
10:46And also the idea of who we are doesn't really belong to us anyway.
10:50It's a collective piece of property.
10:53Who I am, because it belongs in other people's minds too, is as much a product of their mind
11:01as it is my actions.
11:06I don't know how I got lucky to end up with Chris because it's kind of outrageous how
11:11well-matched we are.
11:13I was writing for a local paper doing arts correspondence and I reviewed his debut novel,
11:18War of the Encyclopedists, for my local paper.
11:21I loved it.
11:22I wrote a rave review and I submitted it to the paper and that was going to be it.
11:27I wasn't planning on doing anything about that.
11:29But then the next day, serendipitously, I walked out of my apartment and saw in the
11:34diner window across the street a poster for a book reading for this exact book that I
11:39had just reviewed that night at my local bookstore.
11:43And I thought, wow, that's serendipitous.
11:45I never go out in public, but it might be fun to go to a little book reading.
11:49It can't be bad.
11:50No one will notice me there.
11:51Well, of course, I walk into this book reading and, of course, everyone notices I'm there
11:55and there's whisper whispers.
11:56But I get over it.
11:57I sit down and I enjoy this book reading by this very fun-looking guy with stripes carved
12:03into his beard and his best friend.
12:06They wrote the book together and I just thought, wow, they're fun.
12:10I interviewed them for the paper and that interview turned into drinking scotch and
12:13watching Star Trek.
12:16And I don't know.
12:17I just came away from that encounter being like, wow, can I just meet people and make
12:23friends in the world like a normal person in the world now?
12:27And so he became one of my first friends after all of that was over.
12:33And I think the thing that really distinguished him was how not interested he was in the worst
12:39experience of my life.
12:40Like, he did not go down the Google rabbit hole and he did not ask me questions about
12:46it.
12:47He was like, what movie do you want to watch?
12:48And I'd be like, oh, I don't know.
12:49And he'd be like, how about WALL-E?
12:50I haven't seen that in a while.
12:51And I was like, what's WALL-E?
12:52And he's like, what do you mean, what's WALL-E?
12:54That's an incredible movie.
12:55Where were you when you did like this movie was huge.
12:57And I was like, I was probably in prison.
13:01So like things like that would come up and, you know, I would maybe talk about it, but
13:04it wasn't like the focus of our interactions with each other.
13:07We were just getting to know each other as people.
13:10And so he gave me the grace and the space to just be a person and to be a flawed person.
13:18Because like one of the burdens of being accused of a heinous crime is that you feel like you
13:23have to be perfect just to prove your innocence every single day.
13:30And for him to give me the space to be not perfect, to make mistakes, to be angry, to
13:35be sad, to be crying in a closet, to be rude and grumpy.
13:39Like he gives me that space to do that and to be a person.
13:44And it's been so healing for me.
13:48And I feel so lucky.
13:55When I first came home and for the years that I was on trial still, I could not go out my
14:00front door without justified paranoia that I was being followed and that potentially
14:07someone was trying to harm me.
14:11That was really a scary and very difficult and isolating time of my life.
14:17That time of my life, thankfully, is over.
14:22I get to have friends.
14:24I get to go to the grocery store.
14:27At the same time, though, as soon as I became pregnant with my daughter, I was very, very
14:34afraid for her immediately.
14:37Because prior to that, I had gotten married.
14:39And it had been years since the trials and nothing was really going on.
14:43And yet people showed up outside of my wedding venue that I very specifically kept very secret
14:50and very tied down so they could take pictures of me and my family members.
14:55And then, of course, there's that headline or that subtext of, look at Amanda living
15:01her life while Emeritus is dead.
15:04There's always that idea of my identity is attached or inextricably linked to her death.
15:11And so any expression of life in my life is seen or perceived as a kind of offense to
15:18the memory of my friend who got murdered.
15:21And the last thing that I wanted for my daughter was to feel like one of those things.
15:28I did not want the first instance of my daughter's existence into this world be a headline like,
15:34Amanda gives birth to daughter, dot, dot, dot, you know, who will never get to have
15:38a daughter, Meredith.
15:40Like, that is not fair.
15:43It's not fair to me, but it's not fair to my daughter.
15:45That is not what her existence is about.
15:48Her existence is not living in the shadow of the worst experience of my life.
15:54And I was, I didn't know what to do.
15:57I panicked about it.
15:59And my husband and I really thought hard about how we would not just introduce my story and
16:07my my journey to her, but also how we would introduce her, her existence to the world.
16:15And you know, like that, like, just like we had thought as soon as we announced in our
16:22own way through our podcast, Labyrinths, that I was pregnant and my daughter existed.
16:27We were messaged by people who said, I hope your daughter dies so that, you know, what
16:31Meredith's mom went through.
16:34That's that's that's one of those ongoing things that that also sort of pushes back
16:42against that.
16:43Why can't you move on question of like, well, it'd be nice if the world moved on, too.
16:53I love writing.
16:56I love being a mom.
16:57One thing that I would love to be a bigger part of my life is comedy.
17:02So I love comedy.
17:05People just don't usually think of me in comedic terms because I am associated with a tragedy
17:09in their mind.
17:10And a lot of the work that I do is very much either advocating for criminal justice reform
17:16or writing about some really like deep, hard, difficult truths, because, again, that's like
17:20my pedigree.
17:21That's what I know.
17:23But like the absurdity of life and and talk about how to get through things like one chapter
17:28I have in my book is entirely devoted to humor and what it means and why it's such a powerful
17:35influence in my life.
17:36And so what I want to do is I want to write a stand up comedy special.
17:41So stay tuned for that.
17:47I do feel like I have lived two distinct lives and that a part of me did die in Perusia and
17:54that I'm living a whole different life now.
17:57I've been reborn, but I am still informed by that past and by that trauma.
18:01I'm so lucky to be alive right now.
18:04I am so lucky to be able to tell my story.
18:07I'm so lucky to have children like women who get wrongly convicted typically do not get
18:13out in time to have children.
18:16Like it is bonkers how lucky I am.
Comments