This is the story of one of the most disturbing miscarriage of justice this century. It is the story of a nightmare transposed to the real world in a civilized European country and inflicted on a 20 year-old American student. But it is also the story of that young girl’s resilience and nobility and the near miracle of how she overcame her adversity and went on to forgive the man at the heart of her truly terrible experience of multiple years of her young life.

On the evening of November 1st, 2007, a young man called Rudy Guede broke into student accommodation in Perugia, Italy.  Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old exchange student from Leeds was alone in the house. He brutally attacked, raped and murdered her.

Another resident in the house, Amanda Knox, recently arrived from Seattle to study Italian, arrived home after a date with a boy whom she met just a week earlier. The murderer had flown but the evidence of the break-in was all over the place. Amanda called the police and when they came they searched the house and found the dead body of Meredith in her room. Amanda had not seen it up to that point.

It should have been a relatively simple investigation. There was ample forensic evidence at the scene – including DNA evidence which would have led the police directly to Guede, a local living in the same block. 

But a very strange scenario unfolded. The local prosecutor, Giuliano Manini, would not accept the obvious and proceeded to construct the details of this nightmare. He imagined and relentlessly pursued a wild and lurid hypothesis in which three perpetrators of the crime, Amanda, her boyfriend Raffaelo and the actual murderer, Rudy Guede assaulted and murdered Meredith in some kind of Satanic ritual. The details of his concoction are too lurid to even print in this family journal; suffice to say that they were sensational enough to set off a world-wide feeding frenzy in the media. So, not only did we have a legal system mired by the case but also once again had exposed for us the greed and dishonesty of large segments of the international media.

He, incredibly, bamboozled the jury with this story while no effort was made to pursue the evidence which would have produced a just verdict and the conviction for murder of Guede alone.

All three were found guilty of the charges concocted by the prosecutor and Amanda was sentenced to 26 years in prison.  As the verdict was read, a crowd outside the courtroom, which had swallowed the media story hook, line and sinker, burst into cheers. Inside the courtroom, Amanda Knox and her family, her only supporters, began to sob.

Amanda, even as she grappled with the horrors of her situation, already reflected her maturity in dealing with the nightmare she was now living through.

“My mind catapulted to a new sense of reality, which was that the truth didn’t matter and that I didn’t matter and that the only one who could make sense of my life or make it worth living and who could have any sense of control in a very limited way was myself. That was a huge existential shift for me and it was very sad. 

The second act of this story is where the inspiring part begins.

Bari Weiss of The Free Press, in her recent and very impressive interview with Amanda on her podcast Honestly, puts this question to her:

“You’re 22 years old when you’re convicted. Take us back to maybe the moment of the conviction and then the time right after when you’re having to look down the reality of 26 years in a dungeon for something you never did.”

Amanda answers: “That was my moment of growing up. Or as my friend the prison chaplain, Fr Salo, said, that I grew up. I aged 40 years in four. In that moment, she said, my mind catapulted to a new sense of reality

“And I started looking around me with a more clear eye at the life that I had available to me. And I tried to think, what can I possibly do within these limitations that is meaningful to me? And I noticed pretty early on that I actually was very well equipped for that. I was educated. I had learned Italian over the course of two years in prison (awaiting trial). And I could read and write.

“And so many of the women that I was imprisoned with were either foreigners who couldn’t speak Italian or they were Italians who couldn’t read and write.  And so I became the unofficial translator and the unofficial scribe of the prison where I was shipped around to other people’s rooms to help them write their letters for them, read their documents, help them talk to the doctor and explain their ailments. And it became a very meaningful existence that also made my life within the prison environment easier.”

Amanda does not describe herself as religious but she developed a close relationship with Fr Salo. He said to her “If you pray for strength, God doesn’t give you strength. He gives you the opportunity to be strong. She speaks about him in a very beautiful way, explaining how he became her best friend. Fr Salo was in his seventies when she first met him.

“His  way initially of bridging the gap with me was offering me the opportunity to play music in his office under the guise of going to confession…A few times a week, I was allowed to practice playing Beatles songs in his office. And then he invited me to come play music during Mass.”

“And then over the course of time, that time where I’m in his office with him, and he’s helping me learn how to play the piano, we also were talking about just being people, being humans, philosophizing about life, and talking about how do we make sense of the fact that life isn’t fair. And I butted heads with him a lot over this idea that…God has a grand plan that we only get to really appreciate once we’re dead.” 

Fr Salo did believe in her innocence. Every morning on his way to the prison, he would stop by the same cafe to get an espresso, the same one that Manini would go to. And Fr Salo would say to the prosecutor, “you know she’s innocent, right?”

Finally, after serving four years in prison her appeal was granted and the outcome of that was the quashing of her conviction.

On that final day, when she was awaiting the verdict she chose not to wait in a cell underground beneath the courthouse while the jury deliberated. She decided to go back to the prison. “I wanted to go and spend time with Fr  Salo because he had become my friend and my confidant.”

He asked her to sing and recorded her singing voice and said,’ I need to record you singing because I think this is the last time I’m gonna hear your voice. I know you’re going home because I know you’re innocent.’

Fr  Salo was right. She won her appeal and left  prison after four years, not including the years awaiting trial.

And now begins the final act of her story, shorter but even more moving and inspiring than the rest. The nightmare was not really over yet. She explains how the imprint of what had happened remained in her soul.

“I’m the girl accused of murder. My entire life now is defined in a very big way by the most horrible thing that happened to me, that became very public.” Years go by and she is about to get married in a private ceremony. But paparazzi are outside because they’ve tricked some people into revealing the location. She is still haunted by the fact that her life has been taken from her and can never be given back to her by the person who threw her in jail.

She knows she has to go back to Italy to resolve her anguish at its roots. She wants to meet Manini again. She is invited to speak at a conference for the Italian Innocence Project. And the man who put her behind bars sees her speech.

Prior to this, she had sent him two letters, but got no response.  Then, when he sees this speech, he writes to her.

She thought that if she could just have two minutes staring into his eyes and see the soul of the other human being, maybe he would realize his mistake.

At first, he says that he’s unable to meet with her in person because he’s still an acting prosecutor.  But they keep their correspondence going, and she says ,”okay, well, if I can’t see you in person, can we get to know each other?  I want to know you. I told him  that to her he was this nightmarish figure, but that she knew that’s not fair to him, in the same way that the nightmarish version of her out there was not fair to her. “So you tell me who you are.”

And then, in June, 2022, they met face to face in Italy at a private meeting mediated by Fr Salo.

By this stage, over the course of time, and as they were getting closer and closer to this actual in-person meeting, she felt forced to ask herself, why am I doing this? “I realized that if I am setting out in order to get him to admit he was wrong, she was focusing on a door that she couldn’t open.”

“That’s the door that is locked to me. I don’t have control over that. So if that is my goal, then I am doomed to fail. And instead, I ask myself, is there something else in me that is driving this?” Is there something,  she asked herself, not that I can receive from this man, but that I can give him? “And I realized that it was very much that thing that Fr Salo had given me, that ability to see me clearly and to recognize me for the person that I really am.” 

At this point the person who was Dr. Manini became Giuliano. Their relationship is still, in a way, complicated. Their correspondence is private and she has promised to keep it that way.

Before the face to face meeting she describes her emotions. “I woke up that morning and I was utterly terrified. I was also unsure of what I was going to say. And then that morning I just knew…I felt unstoppable. And, you know, I wish upon people moments in their lives when they could feel how I felt in that moment. Because I have never felt more free than when I was able to relinquish so much of what was holding me back, which was that hurt and that pain and that anger, and that hatred for this human being…and instead, embrace the sort of broader self that he is.” 

In her book, Free: My Search for Meaning* published last March, Amanda recounts what Bari Weiss describes as a transcendent moment and what Manini describes as his  “grace”.

In that moment she spoke as though inspired:

“I want you to know that I am innocent. I had nothing to do with Meredith’s murder. You were wrong about me. I was treated as if I was guilty until and unless I could convince you and your colleagues of my innocence. And I failed to do that. But I’m not here to convince you of my innocence.”

“I’m here to let you know that whether you’ve realized your mistake or not, I do not think you are an evil person. Your mistake, which caused great harm to me and my loved ones and to Raffaele and his loved ones, is not the only thing that defines you. I want you to know that despite the fact that I am still hurt today, I am grateful for my experience in which you played an important and influential role.”

“I am grateful because I learned things about myself that I never would have known, both how weak and vulnerable I am, but also how strong. I am a very strong person. I know that in large part because of you.”

“This experience crystallized for me my core values, curiosity, compassion and courage. Curiosity for the truth, not just the version that most serves me. Compassion, especially for those who have made mistakes.”

“And courage to overcome my own fears and pain in order to remain curious and compassionate towards others, especially those who have harmed me. We cannot change the past, but we can change the future. And the mistakes of our past are the opportunities of our future.”

“It is never too late to live up to our values. And I believe you are a person of value. I do not wish you ill.”

“I wish you peace.”

She describes the transformation which she realised had occurred in her. I had “evolved from the philosophical to the spiritual. I felt like a superhero. I felt like I had finally accomplished something that was like the definition of who I was. She had now broken free from the prison of being defined by this thing that I didn’t do.”

“Finally I had done something that wasn’t just a reaction to what was happening to me, it wasn’t just an act of survival. I did not need to go back to Italy to sit down across the table from my prosecutor and say these words to him. That was something that I manifested, that said something about who I was.”

“He came away from that experience using the language of his own spirituality to describe what he felt, which was that he had experienced an act of grace. That’s what he called it.” 

“I did not set out to forgive him. That was not part, it wasn’t part of my  spiritual journey. It wasn’t one of my goals. But I do think that once you really see a person, like really see them, really understand them, in all of their naked flaws, you would, you’d have to be a very cruel and unusual person to not feel compassion for them.”

*Free: My Search for Meaning: Amanda Knox: Grand Central Publishing, 304 pages

ISBN-139781538770719