The Megyn Kelly Show - Amanda Knox on Media Bias and Sensationalism, Reclaiming Her Name, and Motherhood and Marriage ｜ Ep. 211

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00:00:31.240 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.960 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:46.300 Oh, we have a good show for you today. You're going to love this program.

00:00:49.580 Joining me now is Amanda Knox.

00:00:51.880 She's a writer, a new mother and co-host of the podcast Labyrinths

00:00:55.860 with her husband, Christopher Robinson.

00:00:59.400 Amanda is a household name, not just in our country, but worldwide.

00:01:03.680 But not by choice.

00:01:05.380 She has spent the past six years trying to reclaim her life, her story and her freedom

00:01:10.340 after she was wrongfully convicted of a murder she did not commit in Italy in 2009.

00:01:17.040 And she joins me now.

00:01:18.640 Amanda, thank you for being back with me.

00:01:20.620 We interviewed when I was on NBC, and I'm so happy to see you doing so well.

00:01:25.120 And congratulations on the birth of your daughter.

00:01:27.740 Oh, thank you so much, Megyn.

00:01:29.060 It's great to reconnect.

00:01:30.640 So I've been like neck deep in Amanda Knox in preparation for this interview.

00:01:35.680 And of course, I was in the media when this happened to you.

00:01:38.260 So I covered it, not in the way the British tabloids did, but I covered it as a, you know,

00:01:42.780 news story.

00:01:43.320 And as a young woman myself, I was skeptical of the claims being made about you.

00:01:50.360 As a lover of Italy, I was not wanting to believe that they'd be doing this to an innocent

00:01:56.520 American, that there was any sort of anti-Americanism going on there.

00:01:59.940 But it for sure was a dynamic at play.

00:02:01.620 And as I sort of went back through your story, through the Netflix documentary and your book

00:02:08.020 and so on, and a bunch of interviews about you and involving you, I felt the trauma on

00:02:14.200 your behalf.

00:02:14.800 It was never ending.

00:02:16.440 It wasn't like, oh, my God, one year of my life was so awful.

00:02:19.300 It went on and on and on.

00:02:22.620 And you're still you're still trying to get out from under it in some ways.

00:02:26.720 So let's just start at the beginning.

00:02:28.600 I think a lot of people know generally, you know, isn't she that girl, Foxy Noxie, as

00:02:33.360 the newspapers called her?

00:02:34.780 And what happened?

00:02:35.800 Or she was she did she murder somebody?

00:02:37.500 What happened?

00:02:37.940 Right.

00:02:38.060 I think that's how people think about your name, because they're living their own lives.

00:02:42.040 So let's just talk about what happened, because I think I think if you go through it stage

00:02:46.820 by stage and talk about the evidence and what the prosecutor was releasing about you,

00:02:52.000 the story tells itself.

00:02:53.120 Your exoneration, you don't have to prove anything.

00:02:54.580 It it it tells itself when you realize what was done to you.

00:02:59.600 It was deeply wrong.

00:03:01.220 OK, so let's do that.

00:03:02.380 And then we'll talk about what you're doing today.

00:03:03.880 So take us back to Amanda, age 20.

00:03:08.020 And you decide, as I did when I was the same age, to study abroad, as I did in Italy.

00:03:12.540 It's like a dream come true.

00:03:14.480 So you go over there.

00:03:15.680 I'm sure excited for a semester of who knows what.

00:03:19.560 And what was the year?

00:03:20.420 2007, so I was 20 years old, 2007, a language student and really for the first time going

00:03:31.140 out into the world on my own without my parents right there next door to to be right by me

00:03:36.560 and support me.

00:03:38.020 So look at your sweet face. 1.00

00:03:39.500 We're in a way for the first time.

00:03:40.880 So we're doing this on Sirius XM Live, Triumph 111, but we also do a YouTube version of the

00:03:46.620 show and we have the picture of you and you're so cute and you're so young and you're so you

00:03:51.080 look so sweet with your little headband.

00:03:53.620 And, you know, it's like God only knew that if that girl only knew it was about to come 0.94

00:03:58.480 her way. 0.74

00:03:59.440 So you go over there and you you hadn't exactly been a world traveler or, you know, all that

00:04:04.480 experienced in living independently.

00:04:05.860 But you managed to find a place to live, to find your own roommate.

00:04:09.980 So it wasn't like where I went.

00:04:11.420 I went to Syracuse both at home and abroad and they they kind of provided all that for

00:04:15.740 you.

00:04:16.140 You did it on your own.

00:04:18.160 Yeah.

00:04:18.620 Yeah.

00:04:18.880 I had a number of jobs to save up money to be able to spend that year abroad.

00:04:24.620 And when I arrived in Perugia, like I knew that I was signed up for classes, but I had

00:04:29.760 to get my own visa.

00:04:31.140 I had to find my own place to live.

00:04:33.040 But fortunately, this is a small town where a lot of young people are moving through it.

00:04:37.680 So there were a lot of like places to rent.

00:04:39.560 And just outside of my university, there was a young Italian woman who was putting up a 0.99

00:04:45.020 poster for a room for let.

00:04:46.640 And I met with her and immediately we hit things off.

00:04:49.700 So, you know, it was actually a really ideal situation.

00:04:53.520 I was just a few steps away from my university in this beautiful little cottage that was

00:04:58.360 overlooking the valley and living alongside three other young women who are all students,

00:05:03.560 two of whom were Italian and one of whom was British.

00:05:06.820 The Brit was a woman named Meredith Kircher, who you met on September 20th, 2007. 0.82

00:05:13.680 And within 42 days, she would be dead and your life would have changed forever, bringing

00:05:21.720 you here today.

00:05:23.520 You found that roommate and the other two gals. 0.91

00:05:26.500 You found a boyfriend, Rafael Solicito.

00:05:30.000 You'd been dating for just five days, which is a little known fact when Meredith... 1.00

00:05:34.180 Yeah, I think when people like they've called us lovers, they've called us boyfriend and

00:05:38.800 girlfriend.

00:05:39.680 I think that at the time of like, to be perfectly honest, we knew each other for five days.

00:05:44.920 So we were at the very beginning of a like very sweet, romantic, who knows what it was

00:05:50.620 going to be, but it was only five days old.

00:05:52.840 So it wasn't like, you know, we...

00:05:55.660 The way that it was portrayed is that we were like in cahoots in some like deep, inextricable

00:06:01.260 way.

00:06:02.140 Right.

00:06:02.280 And really, we were just getting to know each other.

00:06:04.340 Right. 0.84

00:06:04.580 Later, it will be like, part of a sex cult. 0.93

00:06:06.560 The two of them together.

00:06:07.260 It's like, well, I barely know the guy's last name.

00:06:09.100 I mean, I'm not a sex cult with him and we're not, you know, plotting murders and so on in

00:06:14.220 any event.

00:06:15.460 Okay.

00:06:15.980 So that you, you found Meredith on September 20th and, and November 1st, 2007.

00:06:23.940 Take us to that night.

00:06:25.180 You, you were not at home that night in your apartment.

00:06:28.800 No, I was not.

00:06:29.700 No.

00:06:30.200 So this is the day after Halloween.

00:06:31.880 Um, it was like a day off from school basically.

00:06:35.460 It was, uh, and we were, you know, I was hanging out with Raffaele that day and Meredith, I knew

00:06:41.440 had gone, I had saw her in the morning.

00:06:44.040 She had taken a shower to wipe off the Halloween makeup, did a load of laundry, said, I'll see

00:06:48.920 you later.

00:06:49.680 And that was last I saw of her.

00:06:51.680 I was around like late in the morning, early afternoon.

00:06:54.960 And then I spent the day with Raffaele and I spent the night with Raffaele.

00:06:57.840 You know, as soon as I met this guy and he was so sweet and charming and we made plans

00:07:03.200 to go to a, another town nearby called Gubbio in which we would, you know, spend the weekend

00:07:09.100 and eat truffles like that.

00:07:11.020 That was the world I was in.

00:07:12.640 And, um, I was technically supposed to work that night.

00:07:17.560 Um, I was doing some like basically all around work, like handing out flyers or serving drinks

00:07:24.880 at this local bar.

00:07:25.880 And my boss, Patrick Lumumba, called me that night and said that I, or sent me a text message

00:07:31.500 and said that I didn't have to come in.

00:07:33.320 So I stayed the night with Raffaele and we made plans to leave the next day to go to Gubbio.

00:07:39.160 So you decide to swing by your apartment before going on your trip and you, you walk in and

00:07:46.140 you, as you approach the apartment, you did notice something was off.

00:07:50.720 Take us through that walkthrough.

00:07:52.700 Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:54.940 So coming back to my apartment, my, my thought process was I'm going to go change.

00:08:00.300 I'm going to grab some clothes, grab some things that I can take with me to Gubbio.

00:08:04.420 And so I went back to my place and I noticed the first thing that was off was that the front

00:08:09.500 door was wide open.

00:08:10.860 And of course, like, this is a huge red flag.

00:08:13.980 If you think about it, this isn't the middle of the summer.

00:08:16.320 It's early November.

00:08:17.600 It's cold.

00:08:18.740 Why is the front door wide open?

00:08:20.740 Well, I thought that too, except there was one little trick to our front door, which is

00:08:27.020 that it didn't actually stay closed unless you locked it with a key.

00:08:32.080 So I thought maybe someone left in a hurry and forgot to close the door and lock it with

00:08:37.300 a key and the wind blew it open.

00:08:39.420 So there was a plausible explanation, but still it seemed off.

00:08:43.580 I went into the house.

00:08:44.920 I called out, hello, is anyone there?

00:08:47.000 No one answered.

00:08:48.040 So I went about my business to take a shower inside the main area where I was and in my

00:08:52.960 own bedroom.

00:08:53.640 Nothing seemed to miss.

00:08:54.720 The first next sign that something was amiss was when I went to my bathroom to take a shower.

00:09:01.080 I brushed my teeth and as I was brushing my teeth, I noticed a few droplets of blood in

00:09:06.620 the sink.

00:09:07.720 And this is, again, I didn't automatically think at that moment, a few drops in the sink

00:09:14.640 of the door open that someone had been murdered.

00:09:17.860 What I thought was, oh, this is a room full or this is a house full of girls. 1.00

00:09:22.220 Maybe someone had their period.

00:09:24.120 Who knows what's going on?

00:09:26.400 So I took a shower and I came out of the shower and then I noticed more blood, another splotch

00:09:32.700 of blood on the bath mat.

00:09:34.040 And again, I thought, that's odd, but it's not like a bathroom full of blood.

00:09:39.600 It didn't look like a crime scene to me.

00:09:41.840 It looked like a few drops of blood again.

00:09:44.260 So I got dressed.

00:09:46.660 I went to go dry my hair.

00:09:48.500 And while I was in our second bathroom drying our hair using my Italian roommate's hair 0.98

00:09:54.000 dryer, I noticed that there was feces left in the sink or sorry, not in the toilet.

00:09:59.360 And I thought, that is odd.

00:10:02.700 That is not something that my roommates would do.

00:10:07.700 My especially my Italian roommates were very, very meticulous about cleanliness.

00:10:11.680 So I could understand maybe, you know, menstrual issues, but leaving feces in the sink or in

00:10:18.840 the toilet totally off.

00:10:20.540 I got this weird, creepy feeling that someone was in the house with me and I immediately

00:10:24.740 left and reached, started calling my roommates and reaching out to Raphael or asking Raphael,

00:10:30.280 like, what do you think?

00:10:31.720 Should I, do I need to call?

00:10:33.400 Like, this is something off.

00:10:34.920 I didn't notice that anything was taken from the house, but I feel like I need to know what's

00:10:39.180 going on.

00:10:40.020 At that point, I started calling my roommates.

00:10:42.760 Meredith was not answering the phone.

00:10:44.640 Neither was Laura.

00:10:45.680 The only one of my roommates who did answer was Philomena.

00:10:48.900 And Philomena said, definitely come home.

00:10:52.600 We need to check out to see if any, if our house was broken into.

00:10:55.580 So Raphael and I went back together to see what was going on.

00:11:01.000 I was feeling creeped out.

00:11:02.420 He was there to support me.

00:11:03.900 And we opened up the door to Philomena's room and found it ransacked.

00:11:09.160 Window was broken.

00:11:10.520 The entire room a mess.

00:11:12.380 Meanwhile, Laura's room was totally untouched.

00:11:15.540 We went and checked her room and we went to check Meredith's room and found that her door

00:11:19.760 was locked.

00:11:21.000 And again, we thought this is really strange because the only time I've ever seen Meredith

00:11:25.560 lock her door was when she was like changing or something and didn't want to be disturbed.

00:11:31.180 So I thought, is Meredith in there?

00:11:32.980 Is she, is she not answering?

00:11:34.820 Like we knocked on the door, didn't answer.

00:11:37.380 Raphael even tried kicking down the door.

00:11:39.240 Didn't, didn't succeed.

00:11:40.820 We called the cops.

00:11:43.320 Raphael, I called the cops to be more specific because at that point, I didn't even know how

00:11:46.700 to call the cops.

00:11:47.420 He explained there was a break in and we stepped outside of the house to wait for the police

00:11:52.600 to arrive.

00:11:53.280 Um, within minutes, two plainclothes police officers arrived and said that they were there

00:12:00.540 because they had discovered some cell phones in a nearby garden.

00:12:04.560 And we thought, wait, you aren't here for the break in call.

00:12:07.260 And they said, no, we're here for these cell phones.

00:12:09.160 They belong to Philomena Romanelli.

00:12:11.320 And I thought, that's weird.

00:12:12.460 I was just talking to Philomena on the phone.

00:12:14.340 She's on her way.

00:12:15.100 You can ask her about them when she gets here.

00:12:17.200 Philomena arrives, the police who are investigating, or they don't arrive yet.

00:12:23.340 So Philomena arrives.

00:12:25.160 She says, those phones belong to Meredith.

00:12:28.300 I let her borrow an SMS card from me.

00:12:31.200 So they belong to Meredith.

00:12:32.540 Where is Meredith?

00:12:33.460 And I say, well, her door is locked.

00:12:35.460 And Philomena says, well, someone needs to break down the door.

00:12:38.540 There was a conversation between her and the police officers arguing about whether or not

00:12:42.500 they were allowed to break down the door.

00:12:44.260 But ultimately what happened is Philomena, her boyfriend, their friends, and the police

00:12:50.020 all sort of charged Meredith's door and broke it down while I was, um, while me and Raffaele

00:12:55.500 were standing in the kitchen.

00:12:57.420 And that is when they discovered the crime scene.

00:13:01.080 And this is, um, I think this is a really important point.

00:13:06.360 A lot of people have asked me, when did I think everything started going wrong?

00:13:11.520 And of course, it's hard for me to be in the, in the hearts and minds of the investigators

00:13:15.700 and the prosecution and how they could think that I had something to do with this or not.

00:13:20.220 A lot has been said about my behavior versus my roommate's behaviors.

00:13:25.420 And I think that there is a very important difference between my reaction and Philomena's

00:13:33.880 reaction in the immediacy of discovering the crime scene.

00:13:37.600 That major difference is that Philomena saw inside Meredith's room and I did not.

00:13:45.520 I never saw the crime scene with my own eyes and Philomena did.

00:13:50.120 And so, of course, Philomena, seeing Meredith's body on the floor, blood everywhere, this horrible

00:13:57.660 nightmare flipped out, started screaming, started crying, was hysterical, was inconsolable.

00:14:04.980 Everyone was yelling in Italian, forcing us outside of the house.

00:14:08.440 And I barely understood what was going on.

00:14:12.200 I barely understood Italian at this time.

00:14:15.120 I never saw into Meredith's room.

00:14:17.300 I never saw the horror of that tragedy.

00:14:20.240 And so I was pushed out of the house, bewildered, but not horrified because I didn't know what

00:14:26.160 was going on.

00:14:27.440 And so when the police and everyone talks about just outside of the crime scene, of course,

00:14:33.040 there's two, there's two roommates here to this girl who just died. 1.00

00:14:36.600 One of them is flipping out and hysterical.

00:14:38.920 The other one is just kind of standing there looking confused and getting a kiss from her boyfriend. 0.98

00:14:43.640 Well, the big difference is not that one of them is innocent and one of them is guilty.

00:14:49.660 It's that one of them knows exactly what's going on and the other does not.

00:14:54.000 And so I always that always struck me as a little odd.

00:14:57.080 It's like having lived in Italy as well for for many months.

00:15:00.860 I went over there a few times as an exchange student, the Italians in general are are bigger 1.00

00:15:06.920 in their personalities and in their emotions.

00:15:09.080 And there's absolutely no social, I don't know, caution about showing your emotions or

00:15:15.500 expressing your upset or your tears.

00:15:17.040 None.

00:15:17.460 It's expected.

00:15:18.900 Americans, I would say, are a little different in that way. 0.95

00:15:21.000 I know you you've got some German heritage.

00:15:22.960 Same, you know, for the Germans. 0.97

00:15:24.800 So even if you had known to me, that was never real.

00:15:27.780 I don't know if that wasn't a real selling point in whether you had done anything or not.

00:15:32.700 But I understand why you're sensitive about it, because now you've had a million headlines

00:15:36.160 written about every move, every turn of your head in the weeks and months.

00:15:41.040 That's a fair point, Megan, because like that's, you know, it's another fair point to say

00:15:45.460 what what constitutes guilty versus innocent behavior in the immediacy of discovering a

00:15:52.960 crime scene.

00:15:54.020 And I think there's a lot of speculation about like the turn of the head or the look or whether

00:15:59.520 or not you would get a hug or whether or not you would cry.

00:16:01.660 And I think these are all excuses for people to sort of retroactively justify their original

00:16:09.720 opinion about you.

00:16:10.800 But that isn't to say that there aren't actual, you know, behaviors that do indicate guilt.

00:16:16.720 And a really great example of this is the man who actually killed Meredith Kircher, Rudy

00:16:21.940 Gade, fled the country.

00:16:24.100 That's I think that's a pretty like, you know, I think one could argue that he wasn't just

00:16:28.780 fleeing the country for so that he could have a vacation in Germany like he was fleeing the

00:16:33.920 country specifically because he had committed this horrible crime and was trying to get away

00:16:38.560 with it.

00:16:38.880 Well, the other thing is, I mean, you could you could easily spin it the other way that

00:16:42.160 if you had gotten hysterical and were, you know, out there like, oh, my God, oh, my God,

00:16:45.880 you could easily say she oh, she's acting.

00:16:47.780 She's overcompensating, you know, so that people think she's upset when she's not.

00:16:52.380 There's no perfect way of handling it.

00:16:54.420 And I've seen enough criminal cases to know you really can't deduce that much from, you

00:16:58.940 know, a person's emotional state when they call 911 when they first talk to investigators.

00:17:02.820 But you're right.

00:17:04.680 Fleeing is so much evidence of guilt.

00:17:06.780 They'll allow it in in a court of law as evidence of guilt many times.

00:17:10.960 So so there you are.

00:17:12.620 And that's where we see the video of you and Raffaele comforting each other and you're

00:17:16.460 kissing.

00:17:16.980 Now that I know you'd only been dating five days, that actually makes more sense, too.

00:17:20.240 I mean, you find a new hot Italian boyfriend.

00:17:22.500 You're over there.

00:17:22.940 It's like you do spend a lot of time kissing.

00:17:25.040 You're young.

00:17:25.680 You're like a babe.

00:17:27.000 You're there.

00:17:27.740 You're scared.

00:17:28.400 You're kissing.

00:17:29.180 People would use this against you as evidence of criminality.

00:17:31.700 We now know it's nothing of the sort.

00:17:35.040 Then then enter.

00:17:37.260 We've got to introduce Giuliano.

00:17:39.540 I always struggle with his last name, but Giuliano.

00:17:42.780 Is it Mignani or Mignani?

00:17:44.580 What is it?

00:17:46.160 Mignini.

00:17:46.900 Mignini.

00:17:47.400 OK, so we go with the true Italian.

00:17:49.060 Mignini.

00:17:49.700 M-I-G-N-I-N-I. 1.00

00:17:52.000 This is I mean, if he wanted you to be the villain of this movie, he wind up he winds

00:17:58.480 up being one of the villains of this movie.

00:18:00.880 And this guy had a long history in Italy before he ever met Amanda Knox.

00:18:05.920 He had investigated a serial murderer there who was dubbed the monster of Florence.

00:18:11.500 And he had made some, I don't know, 10 or 20 arrests, all of which were ultimately thrown

00:18:16.740 out.

00:18:17.040 He was censured by the Italian courts.

00:18:21.240 He had already been disciplined for unethical behaviors before he met you.

00:18:27.200 And he got he was actually on trial for abusive office while trying me for Meredith's murder.

00:18:33.940 Oh, my gosh.

00:18:34.840 Case.

00:18:35.300 Yeah.

00:18:35.680 So it's not like it is here because people hear that and they think, well, no, if that

00:18:39.220 happened to a lawyer or prosecutor here, he would be he'd be benched.

00:18:43.120 You know, he wouldn't be allowed to go back out there.

00:18:45.220 Or that's not the way it worked there.

00:18:47.080 And in fact, he's still doing well in his job in Italy.

00:18:51.600 But he settled on you very early.

00:18:54.680 They brought you, I guess, back to the crime scene after you had left that morning.

00:18:59.320 They made you search through a knife drawer to see if anything was missing.

00:19:03.180 You started crying and the documentary about you on Netflix shows him reaching all these

00:19:09.420 crazy conclusions.

00:19:10.960 Right.

00:19:11.480 Like because you cried when they made you search through the knife drawer in the home in which

00:19:16.800 your friend had just been murdered.

00:19:18.980 He deduced what?

00:19:20.080 He deduced that I was remembering the murder somehow.

00:19:24.940 So, again, like this is really like it's a really important point.

00:19:28.640 And I'm glad that you brought this up, because, again, you talk about, you know, what footage

00:19:33.200 is endlessly recycled that is meant to make me look guilty and what is forgotten.

00:19:38.720 And of course, there were moments when I was feeling scared and and crying.

00:19:42.660 And even those were pitched in the in through the lens of me being a guilty person for of

00:19:48.320 me being involved.

00:19:49.480 And I think that that that is, you know, that moment when they asked me to search through

00:19:56.840 the cutlery drawer to see if there was anything missing.

00:20:00.100 That's when I had like this first like wave of sudden horror at what Meredith had gone through

00:20:06.960 the full gravity of it, the full like just pain of it.

00:20:10.480 And I was shocked and scared.

00:20:12.760 And it was sort of my equivalent to Philomena's shock at seeing the crime scene herself.

00:20:19.880 Like that was my moment of like sudden realization and horror.

00:20:23.200 And I lost it.

00:20:24.120 I was hysterical.

00:20:25.100 But, of course, by that point, I was not just a witness in the eyes of the prosecution.

00:20:30.820 Another really important point about the difference between the Italian justice system and the

00:20:34.460 American justice system is we think that prosecution, the prosecution and the detectives work really

00:20:41.600 closely here in the United States.

00:20:42.920 Well, they work even more closely in Italy, where prosecutors actually are the head of the

00:20:49.800 investigation in a case.

00:20:51.340 And so they don't just take whatever evidence the detectives give them and decide whether or

00:20:56.800 not a case should be brought to court.

00:20:58.340 They are there from the beginning building their case with the help of the detectives.

00:21:03.680 And so when my prosecutor decided at the very beginning that I must know something that I'm not telling

00:21:10.420 that he understood that or he he looked at me through this lens of Amanda's not being fully

00:21:18.580 forthcoming and whatever Amanda is experiencing must have something to do with her involvement

00:21:25.320 with this crime, the whole system that's so messed up.

00:21:29.360 I mean, there's a reason we separated out over here.

00:21:31.440 And that's one of them is the prosecutor's role is to seek justice.

00:21:36.000 It's not to get a conviction.

00:21:37.820 It's to seek justice no matter what that is.

00:21:40.380 And so if the case as it goes along, even at trial reveals to the prosecutor he or she has

00:21:46.240 the wrong defendant, they have an ethical obligation to drop it, to abandon the case because

00:21:52.200 they they they're there to get a just result, not to put somebody in prison.

00:21:56.400 And yet if you are the investigator soup to nuts and then the guy who tries the case, they're

00:22:02.060 setting you up to want to get her from day one.

00:22:05.520 Once you've settled on somebody, the rest of your days are spent building your case against

00:22:10.240 her.

00:22:10.520 And you really don't have much incentive to keep an open mind or think about overall justice.

00:22:15.160 You just want to win.

00:22:16.860 And this guy's history.

00:22:17.600 Consciously or consciously, like, I mean, I think there's a lot of cognitive science

00:22:22.300 research that shows that you could even think that you have the best intentions and yet still

00:22:27.860 be doing what ultimately results to unethical work and an injustice because of confirmation

00:22:35.300 bias and because of certain prejudices that you have in your own mind.

00:22:39.980 Tunnel vision is a very natural thing that we all get sometimes.

00:22:43.020 But if you are in that position of authority who has the power to take away the freedom

00:22:49.420 of a of a citizen, you should constantly be doing self auditing in order to make sure that

00:22:56.520 you are following the evidence instead of building a case and finding the evidence that you want

00:23:01.420 and ignoring the evidence that you don't want.

00:23:03.440 To the contrary, this guy, Mignini, is on the record talking about the accolades he was receiving

00:23:10.540 in going after you.

00:23:12.320 And that's where I'm going to pick it up right after this quick break.

00:23:15.740 And later we'll get to the media and Hollywood and how Amanda's trying to reclaim her own

00:23:20.840 story and her name.

00:23:23.440 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.

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00:23:58.940 So Amanda, you, the prosecutor's putting you through these paces and this is all within

00:24:03.720 a matter of days before, days after the murder.

00:24:09.580 And I just, before I leave the subject of this prosecutor, I want to, I want to read the

00:24:13.280 audience.

00:24:13.700 The quote, I was going to play you the soundbite from the documentary, but it's in Italian.

00:24:17.420 So that's not much help, much help without the subtitles to our listeners.

00:24:21.280 This is what he said.

00:24:22.980 Quote, normally people say that nobody is a prophet in his own country, but that's not what

00:24:28.780 I experienced.

00:24:30.120 Complete strangers would come up to me and ask to shake my hand.

00:24:33.460 They would congratulate me.

00:24:34.980 It gives me satisfaction because Perugia is my little homeland.

00:24:39.480 He loved it.

00:24:40.220 He was trading off of gunning for you.

00:24:43.620 Yeah.

00:24:44.620 And I think that, you know, the biggest sign of this, it wasn't just Giuliano Mignini, although

00:24:51.480 he was head of the investigation.

00:24:54.140 It seemed like the entire Italian legal system ultimately in the end was banking on me being

00:25:03.580 guilty in order to not admit fault.

00:25:05.780 And so also I, you know, if I'm going to empathize with someone like Giuliano Mignini, I have to

00:25:11.860 admit that we all have ego and it's really hard to admit when we're wrong, especially when

00:25:16.960 we've made a mistake in such a public way.

00:25:20.260 I was arrested before any evidence was made available.

00:25:23.880 Any forensic evidence was, was there.

00:25:26.820 So they made a gut feeling about whether or not that I was guilty.

00:25:30.440 They arrested me.

00:25:31.840 They imprisoned me.

00:25:33.120 They did a public press conference saying that the case was closed.

00:25:38.260 And then lo and behold, the evidence starts coming back, indicating a totally separate

00:25:42.560 figure who had nothing to do with me, his fingerprints, footprints in her blood.

00:25:47.200 It is his DNA in Meredith's body, a local known burglar named Rudy Gaudet. 0.98

00:25:54.100 And they thought, crap, like they had imprisoned an innocent person.

00:25:59.980 And this instead of admitting fault at the very beginning, they decided to pursue a case 0.93

00:26:08.000 in which a convoluted case in which they were forcing these separate figures with very different

00:26:13.700 pieces of evidence into the same equation and making excuses for why it didn't add up.

00:26:18.680 Instead of saying crap, they should have said, phew, thank God we found out the truth before 0.94

00:26:24.460 we put this innocent girl and her boyfriend in jail. 0.99

00:26:27.960 But they didn't.

00:26:28.920 They went a different way.

00:26:29.880 So over the course of the next few days, I guess it was about five days.

00:26:34.160 What I read was they interrogated you for nearly 60 hours.

00:26:38.140 And this is an important piece of it, too.

00:26:40.200 And I'm not going to say this doesn't happen in the United States, but we have a lot more strict

00:26:44.080 rules on what you're at least supposed to be doing in an interrogation.

00:26:47.940 So describe what the police were doing to you over those days.

00:26:52.380 Yeah.

00:26:52.760 So it's interesting because it's almost like my family, especially my aunt in Germany,

00:26:58.560 had a feeling that something was off.

00:27:00.340 It didn't make sense to my family that I was spending hours and hours and hours answering the

00:27:08.300 same questions over and over again in the police office.

00:27:12.600 My mom, of course, thought there's a killer on the loose in Perugia who almost killed my

00:27:17.740 daughter.

00:27:18.500 I want her to come home.

00:27:20.260 My aunt in Germany is saying, I'm going to come down there and get you.

00:27:23.520 You need to go talk to the embassy.

00:27:25.240 You're clearly not safe.

00:27:27.400 But of course, the police were telling me, no, Amanda, you're a very, very important witness

00:27:32.880 in this case.

00:27:33.620 You were the first person to arrive at home and discover the crime scene.

00:27:37.840 You were the roommate who was closest to Meredith.

00:27:40.160 You are too important to us and our investigation to leave.

00:27:44.840 And I believed them.

00:27:46.120 And so I believed them when over the course of those interrogations, they told me that

00:27:52.360 I didn't need a lawyer and that I was not a suspect and that I didn't know.

00:27:58.560 And they and I and they lied to me.

00:28:01.260 They didn't.

00:28:01.680 They told me that they knew who the murderer was.

00:28:05.360 They had tapped my phone and I had no idea.

00:28:08.740 They went through my phone and found my my text message exchange between myself and Patrick

00:28:15.480 Lumumba, my boss.

00:28:16.500 And they interpreted that message that I sent him, which was a poorly translated Italian

00:28:23.180 phrase.

00:28:24.140 I intended to say, see you later, whenever they interpreted that to mean I'll see you

00:28:30.580 later tonight, this night, the night that the crime happened.

00:28:33.560 And they interpreted that to mean that I had met with my boss, Patrick Lumumba, and that

00:28:38.540 he had murdered Meredith.

00:28:39.680 They lied to me and told me that everything that I thought I remembered about that night

00:28:46.180 was wrong, that Raffaele said that I had not spent the night with him and that I was

00:28:53.420 so traumatized by what I had witnessed Patrick do that I could no longer remember it.

00:28:59.780 And they pushed me, slapped me, yelled at me, told me to remember the truth, remember what

00:29:08.100 Patrick did to her and very leading, suggestive, coercive techniques, like even just saying,

00:29:15.780 well, did you hear Meredith scream?

00:29:17.280 And I said, I don't know.

00:29:18.560 And they say, well, of course you would hear Meredith scream.

00:29:21.260 She's being murdered.

00:29:22.000 And I said, OK, I guess I heard Meredith scream like this was the conversation I was

00:29:26.080 having.

00:29:26.460 And this is what the police wrote up in their report and had me sign.

00:29:31.740 And of course, this was without an interpreter.

00:29:34.540 This was without a lawyer.

00:29:36.380 And this was in Italian.

00:29:40.000 I was doing this in Italian.

00:29:41.780 Oh, my gosh.

00:29:42.880 Oh, my gosh.

00:29:44.020 I didn't.

00:29:44.720 I'm only now realizing this.

00:29:46.460 I did read that they were sending in two different detectives or police officers pretty

00:29:52.020 much every couple of hours so that they would be fresh and could keep coming at you.

00:29:55.480 You got no breaks.

00:29:56.460 You didn't get water.

00:29:57.440 They kept you up overnight.

00:29:59.040 This is how it's done.

00:30:00.200 This is how false confessions are given.

00:30:02.060 And when you see a false confession, I mean, it's like nine times out of 10, it looks just

00:30:06.500 like this.

00:30:07.160 How does it happen?

00:30:07.900 Just like this.

00:30:08.980 You break down a person's willpower to the point where they'll say anything just to get

00:30:13.640 out of the room, just for you to leave them alone.

00:30:16.340 And they'll believe anything.

00:30:17.400 Like, I genuinely believed at a certain point that the only explanation for the police's

00:30:22.680 behavior towards me was that I must have amnesia and I must have witnessed the murder.

00:30:27.220 And it wasn't until they stopped screaming at me and stopped hitting me that I had a moment

00:30:32.220 to take a breath, to regain a sense of composure and realize what had just happened.

00:30:38.620 And I recanted immediately.

00:30:41.040 But of course, at that point, the police had already gotten what they wanted, signed statements

00:30:44.960 from me.

00:30:45.480 And so they ignored me.

00:30:46.860 They told me, don't worry about it.

00:30:48.520 Your true memories will return.

00:30:50.700 In the meantime, we're going to be taking you to a holding place for your own protection.

00:30:54.800 Then you'll get to see your mom.

00:30:57.260 Why would they I mean, why would they be so focused on getting you to point the finger

00:31:01.660 at your boss from Le Chic?

00:31:04.740 Right.

00:31:04.920 That was the restaurant.

00:31:06.120 That was the bar.

00:31:07.040 Why?

00:31:07.540 Like, I could understand them trying to get you to say I did it.

00:31:10.940 But why were they so focused on you getting, you know, getting you to point the finger

00:31:14.180 at him?

00:31:14.440 You know, I don't think that they actually thought at the beginning that I did it.

00:31:20.000 I especially we're looking at, you know, a sexual assault murder.

00:31:23.760 These are almost always committed by men.

00:31:27.040 And I think that's something that is overlooked in this case, the way that it's been made so

00:31:32.460 much of a like girl on girl sexualized fantasy crime.

00:31:35.980 I'm like when we're talking about the realities of violence against women, we're talking about

00:31:41.020 male against female violence against women.

00:31:44.240 And they I think what they believe at the beginning was that I genuinely knew something

00:31:50.420 because they misread my behavior.

00:31:53.160 They inaccurately interpreted my behavior to mean that I was not surprised by Meredith's

00:31:59.800 murder and that I was that I knew something that I wasn't telling them.

00:32:05.260 And so they pressured me into implicating someone because they believed that I knew who it was.

00:32:10.980 And it was over the course of my interrogations that I think they settled upon Patrick, who

00:32:16.360 they didn't know from from Bob or John, like they had just seen a text message between me

00:32:22.260 and a person named Patrick on my phone in their mind, setting up an appointment.

00:32:27.540 And they thought, this is it.

00:32:30.300 This is the guy.

00:32:31.700 Amanda, let him in.

00:32:33.220 Amanda knows what happened.

00:32:34.600 We got to get her to admit it.

00:32:37.100 So did they arrest him right away?

00:32:39.280 They arrested him right away without checking his alibi, without doing anything, despite the

00:32:44.860 fact that I recanted.

00:32:46.320 And they kept him in prison for two weeks, even though numerous people came forward saying

00:32:52.140 that they had been with him the entire night.

00:32:54.580 Wow.

00:32:54.660 I mean, it just shows there they had no appetite for the truth.

00:32:58.580 And he question about him before we move on from him, because I read that he recently

00:33:04.000 said something like, why hasn't she ever apologized to me?

00:33:09.280 Or this is this is not that reason was like 2011.

00:33:11.860 There was a quote from him saying she never reached out to me.

00:33:14.480 Is that still true?

00:33:17.180 And no.

00:33:17.980 And I did apologize to him in court, so I don't know what he means.

00:33:22.740 Because I'm assuming that he's potentially talking about how his lawyer at a certain

00:33:27.620 point reached out to me asking for money and wanting me to give it to admit to this

00:33:35.280 whole situation, his imprisonment being my fault.

00:33:38.020 And my point was, this was not my fault.

00:33:41.380 I was coerced into signing statements.

00:33:43.240 And this is the police's fault.

00:33:44.760 I was going to say, they should they should sue someone, but it shouldn't be Amanda Knox.

00:33:49.940 OK, so so that's Patrick.

00:33:51.600 Then he gets out because after a short amount of time, he's able to prove to them he has

00:33:56.520 an alibi and they're not going to be able to pin this on them.

00:33:58.960 Um, and so you're sitting you, you go to jail.

00:34:04.140 They they they not only arrest him, they arrest you and they arrest Raphael.

00:34:08.500 But who's my charges?

00:34:10.380 Right, right.

00:34:11.160 But so but no charges are actually filed against you.

00:34:13.260 And you sit there for a year before they actually charge you with murder.

00:34:18.940 Yeah.

00:34:19.120 So they saw they sat me there for eight months before I was officially indicted and charged

00:34:25.880 with a crime.

00:34:26.700 And that's another one of those differences between the American system and the Italian

00:34:30.500 system.

00:34:31.000 In this Italian system, they can hold you in custody for up to a year without charging

00:34:36.500 you while you're under investigation.

00:34:39.000 Wow, that is scary.

00:34:40.900 So at what point do you say to them, you might want to consider this guy Rudy Gaudet because

00:34:47.220 he was not in your immediate friend circle, but he was kind of on the periphery.

00:34:50.680 So it was a name you knew.

00:34:52.460 And when they were asking you, tell us everybody, tell us everybody who could be who's been

00:34:56.680 in the house, who you guys are friends with and so on.

00:34:58.900 You had mentioned that name and he was a known criminal.

00:35:02.520 I mean, he was somebody who had been known as a robber in the area.

00:35:05.860 He was apparently into drugs.

00:35:08.960 He was on the police radar prior to all of this.

00:35:12.340 So I would think that name would have been like, oh, he likes to rob people.

00:35:15.020 Oh, and he'd also been he'd also threatened people with knives prior to this.

00:35:18.640 So you'd think that they'd be like, oh, red flag.

00:35:21.420 Yes.

00:35:21.960 Let's follow that one up.

00:35:23.300 When did you first mention his name and how long did it take them to focus on him?

00:35:29.100 Actually, it's interesting.

00:35:30.360 I didn't mention his name because I didn't know his name.

00:35:33.920 I knew him to be the guy like I had met him once.

00:35:37.480 And sure, I had been introduced like Rudy, but I didn't remember his name.

00:35:42.040 I remembered that he was a guy who played basketball with the guys who lived below us.

00:35:47.020 And I didn't know anything about his history.

00:35:49.980 I'd never really hung out with him.

00:35:51.920 I only knew him from having encountered him that one time.

00:35:56.460 And and, you know, I'd seen him around like he played in the basketball court near the university.

00:36:01.660 But he wasn't like a friend of mine.

00:36:04.140 In fact, in the very beginning, I had mentioned a character named I think his name was shaky.

00:36:11.020 I think his nickname was shaky because I remember he was a sort of sketchy guy who liked to dance and hang out with Meredith and her friends who once tried to like take sort of forcefully take me home with him.

00:36:24.780 And I raised the police's attention to that person.

00:36:28.100 But of course, he had nothing to do with the crime.

00:36:30.080 And I remember the moment when Rudy Gaudet's name was finally made public.

00:36:36.300 It was after they had already found his fingerprints and footprints in her or fingerprints, at the very least, in her blood, in Meredith's blood at the crime scene.

00:36:45.360 They they were able to process those fingerprints, identify him from having his, you know, long history of burglaries and identify this person and track him down.

00:36:56.300 And there's this like really interesting sort of moment of timing where the police released Patrick Lumumba almost at the exact same time that they arrested Rudy Gaudet so that they had someone sort of a switcheroo that they didn't have to once again admit fault in a big way because here they were.

00:37:14.980 They found the real guy.

00:37:16.220 And I remember sitting there in my prison cell watching the news as this happened, as Rudy Gaudet was being arrested in Germany, and I saw his face.

00:37:26.320 I heard his name and I thought, that guy, the basketball guy, like that's the guy.

00:37:33.800 Like, sure, I've seen him before, but it never occurred to me that he would do this.

00:37:38.800 Of course, I didn't know about his history of criminality.

00:37:42.260 And I had this like moment of like relief, even when they found him, because I thought, oh, my gosh, this is going to be over soon.

00:37:51.960 They found out who really did it and that it wasn't over soon, of course.

00:37:58.160 But boy, were you were you wrong on that?

00:38:00.160 Up next, I'm going to ask Amanda about the lies the prosecutor was openly telling about her, the active misleading they did with the press to try to get people to believe that it was Amanda, all of which fell completely apart.

00:38:13.880 We're going to do that right after this quick break, and we'll come back with Amanda Knox.

00:38:18.020 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.

00:38:21.860 Some days bring growth.

00:38:23.380 Others bring challenges.

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00:38:36.080 Don't let life's challenges stand in the way of your success.

00:38:39.520 Protect what you've built today.

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00:38:45.340 Canada Life, insurance, investments, advice.

00:38:53.680 So, Amanda, the prosecutor put out, among other things, he and his team put out a picture of a bloody sink.

00:39:02.260 And this sink was covered in blood.

00:39:05.720 I mean, it was a wash in red. 0.99

00:39:08.100 And they basically were like, she's a liar. 1.00

00:39:10.940 She came home. 0.97

00:39:11.900 She saw that.

00:39:12.860 She didn't think anything was wrong.

00:39:14.060 And it was a complete lie because the actual sink you saw, and there are pictures of that, too, just had a couple of drops of blood.

00:39:20.660 The picture they put out had been treated with some sort of a chemical that is supposed to show them if there's blood.

00:39:26.280 And the substance itself is red.

00:39:28.900 So it's all over the sink.

00:39:30.280 This is my understanding.

00:39:31.400 It was an active attempt to mislead.

00:39:34.160 I mean, you could get disbarred for doing such a thing as a lawyer here.

00:39:37.000 But this is just one of the examples, and I know that there are others, of the ways in which they try to unfairly portray you in the media.

00:39:43.840 Yeah, and I discussed this on Labyrinth about media selection bias because I think there's this ongoing perception that even if I'm innocent, there must be something wrong with me, or this wrongful conviction must be my fault because no reasonable person would act the way that Amanda acted.

00:40:04.700 And, you know, even as recently as Malcolm Gladwell's book, Talking to Strangers, where he analyzes the case, and he, you know, from the very get-go is like, we know who did this crime.

00:40:15.980 It's Rudy Gaudet.

00:40:16.860 But he then goes on to say, well, the reason why Amanda was wrongly convicted was because she's ultimately an innocent person who acts guilty.

00:40:25.900 And maybe that's why wrongful convictions happen.

00:40:28.640 Innocent people act guilty.

00:40:31.120 And I just wanted to push back against that because, again, who, first of all, has agency in the equation?

00:40:40.080 Who's the one who's doing the wrongful, like the wrongful convicting?

00:40:43.840 Who's the one who's pursuing a case against an innocent person despite what the evidence is telling them?

00:40:49.160 And who is presenting false pictures to the media in order to misrepresent the evidence against her in court?

00:40:56.200 Right.

00:40:56.720 Who is whose decisions are shaping these events?

00:40:59.180 They certainly were not mine.

00:41:01.100 And if anything, I was the one who had the least amount of agency in this in this equation.

00:41:06.160 So, you know, when I think about the ways that even just the ways that they portrayed Meredith versus me, right?

00:41:16.300 Like they acted like Meredith and I were two extreme opposites of the ideals of femininity.

00:41:24.640 They turned this into a morality play about female sexuality and morality. 1.00

00:41:30.220 They portrayed Meredith as this perfectly invisible, ideal, serious, studious, non-casual like person who would never, ever, ever just go out with boys or have fun or do anything like that.

00:41:45.800 She was a serious young woman who had a fidanzato, a fiancé, someone who we can all agree is a perfect victim. 0.88

00:41:54.140 Well, of course, you don't have to be, you know, a studious person who never goes out and has fun to be a victim of a horrible crime on on the first place.

00:42:03.380 And Meredith was not someone who didn't just like Meredith did like to go and hang out and have fun with friends and go dancing and have like casual, you know, relationships like this. 0.50

00:42:11.640 That was her as well. And on the flip side, there was the portrayal of me as when in reality I was actually quite similar to Meredith as someone who was uninhibited and and lustful.

00:42:25.760 And and at odds, like jealous of Meredith's purity and and everything depraved that you could accuse a woman of, particularly through her sexuality and using that as an excuse to say, well, if she's capable of all of this sex, she must also be capable of violence, very much playing into the Madonna horror dichotomy. 0.54

00:42:48.440 It's how did they find out the number of sexual partners you had had?

00:42:52.300 I know you've talked about it, but like, how did they know that?

00:42:56.020 Yeah. After I was arrested, I was in prison.

00:43:01.760 I was very uncomfortably being talked to by an official in the prison who would bring me into a private room every day and interrogate me about my sex life.

00:43:12.220 And one day he accompanied me into the doctor's office where I was informed that I had tested positive for HIV and me thinking suddenly that I'm dying and my life is over was told by the vice comandante that I should think about and write down all of the people that I had ever had sex with in order to determine who had given me HIV.

00:43:35.980 So I went right back into my cell, started journaling, crying, thinking that I was dying, wrote down every single person I had ever had sex with in my entire life and what kind of protection we had used.

00:43:48.540 And the very next day, the police raided my cell and took every scrap of paper that I had ever written on.

00:43:58.100 And then a few days later, it was released to the press.

00:44:03.280 Oh, it's disgusting. 0.99

00:44:04.520 Disgusting. It's so disgusting. 1.00

00:44:07.580 You make such a good point about Gladwell, who I love and who's, you know, he's on your side.

00:44:13.400 But you're right. He's got it a little wrong.

00:44:16.740 You know, and I in his defense, I get it because we didn't get to like the cartwheels.

00:44:20.000 I'll ask you about the cartwheels because that's what people think about.

00:44:22.900 But honestly, it wasn't it wasn't your behavior.

00:44:25.740 People may not really fully understand the extent to which they have been manipulated by a dishonest prosecutor who is he's like the Mike Nyfong of Italy.

00:44:36.040 You know, he Mike Nyfong is the guy who tried to put those three Duke University kids in jail for an alleged rape that they did not commit.

00:44:42.300 And he knew it was false, but he didn't care.

00:44:44.740 That's that's what I think Mignini is.

00:44:48.460 And people don't realize at home how he tried to manipulate them from from the sink to he went out and said Amanda Knox went home and she bought bleach and she bleached that entire bathroom.

00:44:59.040 She scrubbed it.

00:44:59.820 Now, you look at the actual photos of post Amanda Knox's visit to the bathroom.

00:45:04.140 It's covered in blood.

00:45:05.440 It's still got the feces in the toilet. 0.85

00:45:07.560 Clearly, nobody has been there doing any cleaning.

00:45:09.600 And he said, we've got receipts.

00:45:11.100 Well, they never released them.

00:45:12.400 There never were receipts showing you do that.

00:45:14.720 But there's never any follow up.

00:45:16.040 Nobody ever goes back to the prosecutor and says, where's the receipt?

00:45:18.880 It's just did you win or lose?

00:45:20.040 And he lost and still whatever, maintain his story.

00:45:22.580 So we've been manipulated the diary, the HIV positive, which was, thank God, untrue.

00:45:26.700 That's that was a lie.

00:45:27.820 Um, and that that leads me to to the disgusting vile media, the disgusting vile media that played along willingly. 0.98

00:45:37.000 And I get it.

00:45:37.820 I get it.

00:45:38.180 Very salacious.

00:45:38.860 So many elements to the story.

00:45:40.080 You're so beautiful.

00:45:40.920 I mean, that was probably your biggest sin in attracting media coverage of this.

00:45:45.200 You know, just you are.

00:45:46.380 You're just you're beautiful.

00:45:47.140 And that will sell papers. 0.91

00:45:48.720 And thanks, Megan.

00:45:50.500 Yeah. 0.93

00:45:50.960 And then like you add in possible sex fiend in like some weird sudden. 0.99

00:45:55.220 And I don't know what they thought you were doing, an orgy where you slip people's throats. 0.97

00:45:59.760 I mean, it was just none of it made any sense.

00:46:01.200 And as soon as Patrick fell apart as your third partner, you, Raffaele and Patrick, your boss, he fell apart because of his alibi.

00:46:07.780 Then they just subbed in Rudy.

00:46:08.960 Oh, Rudy was the third guy.

00:46:10.360 And they held her down because why? 0.84

00:46:11.820 Because she wouldn't have sex with him. 0.92

00:46:13.020 Like there was nothing. 0.70

00:46:13.760 He was making it up, making it up as he went along.

00:46:16.720 But the media portrayed you. 0.98

00:46:19.440 I mean, there's one of the headlines was satanic sex ritual, satanic now. 0.99

00:46:22.940 They called you a she devil. 1.00

00:46:24.780 Certainly the narrative was that you were a whore. 1.00

00:46:27.420 The Foxy Noxy thing came from an innocent thing on your own social media about, as I understand it, you as a soccer player and how you were sly as a fox on the on the field. 0.99

00:46:36.180 I don't I can't even understand.

00:46:38.140 I've been attacked by the media in vicious ways, but nothing compares to this.

00:46:41.940 Yeah, well, and it's interesting because I wasn't in a place to even defend myself at that point.

00:46:48.220 I was locked away and at the mercy of what the police was releasing to the press.

00:46:54.160 And I'm so glad that you brought up like the the claim that I must have cleaned up my DNA, because I remember interviewing Mark Olshaker on Labyrinths.

00:47:04.580 And he said, if Raffaele and I could have somehow selectively cleaned up our DNA from that crime scene and left all of the other evidence there intact, we deserve a Nobel Prize for chemistry.

00:47:17.660 It's just it's but it's interesting because that was like if you imagine the sort of confirmation bias, the mental gymnastics that my prosecutor had to do to account for the fact that here's this crime scene where there's Meredith's body, Meredith's DNA and Rudy Gaudet's DNA and fingerprints and footprints all over the space.

00:47:38.180 And nothing implicating me or Raffaele, that has to be explained somehow.

00:47:42.940 Well, in his mind, it was I was somehow able to clean up all evidence, all traces of me and in order to implicate Rudy Gaudet.

00:47:53.240 And I think the thing that like I I mentioned this in the episode of Labyrinths, where I talk about Rudy Gaudet, because for me, like and maybe we'll get to this later, but like for me, I cannot get over the fact that because the police and the prosecution did not want to admit from the get go that there was no evidence against me and that and drop the charges and release me and Raffaele from prison.

00:48:18.460 Instead of doing that, they actually pursued a case that let Meredith's actual rapist and murderer off the hook.

00:48:26.980 Yeah, he was tried separately from me.

00:48:29.300 He was tried before me.

00:48:31.740 The prosecution was not interested in having him be fully responsible for his crimes.

00:48:36.660 So they never charged him to be fully responsible for his crimes.

00:48:40.180 He was charged with being a part of the murder and but never having actually plunged to the knife himself.

00:48:49.700 And so when Rudy Gaudet points to that today and says, well, no one says I killed her.

00:48:54.160 Someone else killed her. 0.96

00:48:55.200 It's like, well, the reason for that is because the police and prosecution were covering their butts.

00:49:00.140 Yeah, and they allowed him they allowed him the ability to make this argument, this crazy argument, notwithstanding all the proof pointing to him and only him.

00:49:09.980 Now, there was a knife and this is at the heart of the case.

00:49:13.320 The prosecutor claimed that it had both Meredith's DNA on the blade and Amanda's DNA on the handle.

00:49:19.640 It's one of the reasons why the trial went south for Amanda. 1.00

00:49:22.320 And it's also one of the reasons why I don't believe this was an inadvertent mistake by this prosecutor who really was out to get her.

00:49:30.440 That's where we pick it up next.

00:49:31.460 And we'll go back into the media when we come back from a quick break.

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00:50:13.320 So on the subject of Rudy Gaudet,

00:50:15.020 one thing we missed is that he's recorded on tape and the prosecutors had it talking to what he believed was a friend,

00:50:21.660 what was actually an informant, saying he places himself at the crime scene that nice.

00:50:26.380 He claims he slept with Meredith the night of the murder, that he was using the bathroom.

00:50:30.960 And that's when he heard Meredith screaming that he opened the door and saw an assailant fleeing.

00:50:36.960 And Meredith was then dead.

00:50:39.040 But he says on that tape, quote, Amanda was not there.

00:50:42.960 She had nothing to do with it.

00:50:45.340 So this is him talking to a friend.

00:50:47.760 He's like he had no reason to say to that person that you weren't there, that you had nothing to do with it.

00:50:52.420 But still, this wasn't enough for the prosecutor.

00:50:54.160 Your absence of DNA, not enough for him.

00:50:57.900 Nothing.

00:50:58.540 Absolutely no proof other than you telling that weird story at the hands of these police that maybe Patrick did it.

00:51:04.060 And maybe you saw some piece of that.

00:51:06.920 But there's one thing.

00:51:08.700 There's the knife.

00:51:10.360 They find what they believe.

00:51:11.700 They pronounced it's the murder weapon because they say they tested it for DNA.

00:51:15.200 It's got your DNA in the handle.

00:51:17.120 Meredith's DNA on the blade.

00:51:18.460 And this would lead to the stunning moment in in the first trial, January 16th, 2009, where you stood up to hear the verdict and you heard what?

00:51:30.780 Guilty.

00:51:32.400 Coltevole.

00:51:33.940 Oh, so this happens in large part because of the DNA at Evans.

00:51:37.880 And what do we now know about that?

00:51:39.460 Well, gosh, there's so much to say about the knife that's not just the fact that independent experts eventually examined it during my appeals trial and discovered that, first of all, the result or the DNA trace that was linked to Meredith was so small that it actually couldn't be reliably linked to anyone.

00:51:59.240 And furthermore, it was tested in the context of 50 other samples of Meredith's DNA.

00:52:05.240 And so contamination couldn't be ruled out.

00:52:07.800 But I think that, like, for me, it's astonishing that it got that far in the first place because to believe that this knife was used in the crime, you have to believe a number of very, very strange things.

00:52:23.600 The knife didn't match Meredith's stab wounds.

00:52:26.540 And so you have to believe that whoever, if I killed Meredith with that knife, I would have half stabbed her with the knife, but not all the way.

00:52:37.000 It was a knife that was not found at the crime scene.

00:52:40.740 It was pulled at random from a kitchen drawer in Raphael's apartment, which was across town, meaning that this crime, the way that this knife could have taken part in this crime is if I was carrying that knife with me between Raphael's apartment and my house.

00:52:58.680 And the prosecution has always maintained that this was not a premeditated crime.

00:53:05.220 This was a crime that just happened spontaneously in this sort of drug-fueled orgy atmosphere.

00:53:12.200 But if that's true, then you are logically saying that I'm just carrying around a large kitchen knife in my bag with me for what reason?

00:53:21.320 I don't know.

00:53:22.300 And then brought it back to Raphael's apartment, cleaned it up, and put it back into the drawer.

00:53:27.600 I remember the moment when the vice comandante, that same guy, brought me into his office and said, how do you explain this knife?

00:53:37.540 And I remember being told it's Meredith's DNA, her blood is on the knife, and I thought, I have no idea how that happened.

00:53:45.400 I felt like I was being framed, honestly, because I couldn't explain that.

00:53:49.300 But, of course, it wasn't true.

00:53:55.360 And when, eventually, independent experts looked at that evidence, they threw out any sort of link to Meredith or blood in the first place.

00:54:03.780 It did not test positive for blood.

00:54:05.920 And, actually, it was ruled that it was more likely potato starch from me having used it to cook things.

00:54:15.220 Wow.

00:54:16.100 Yeah, apparently it was such a trace amount, and they had tried to amp it up and amp it up, trying to get more and more and more through the same machine that had just processed 50 other Meredith's samples.

00:54:25.740 And that's how they believe it was contaminated, as found by the highest court in Italy, eventually, that this evidence had been contaminated and could not be relied upon.

00:54:34.440 But then there was the clasp of Meredith's bra.

00:54:37.220 And that, seven weeks after her murder and the evidence was being processed, finally, this prosecutor announces he's got Raphael, he's got his DNA on Meredith's bra clasp, which had been detached somehow, I mean, presumably during the struggle, from her actual bra.

00:54:54.840 And I don't, I mean, you tell me, Amanda, I look at this and somebody put that there.

00:55:00.040 How else did Raphael's DNA, we know Raphael did not commit this crime or have anything to do with it.

00:55:04.720 How did his DNA get on Meredith's bra clasp if it wasn't police misconduct?

00:55:09.800 Well, not just Raphael's DNA, also the DNA of two unknown males were also found on that bra clasp.

00:55:16.020 And, you know, all I could think of is that Raphael had been to my house, right?

00:55:22.000 He had been to my room.

00:55:23.320 He had been in the common area.

00:55:24.660 I think they even found the other trace of DNA that they found of Raphael in my house was from a cigarette stub that was in, like, an ashtray in the kitchen.

00:55:34.540 And so it's not that Raphael's DNA wasn't at the house.

00:55:38.180 It just wasn't in the crime scene where Meredith had been murdered.

00:55:41.460 And it wasn't until the police, who were not very highly trained, were going in and out of that room, carrying pieces of evidence with them.

00:55:50.160 Like, by the time they actually discovered this bra clasp, it was long after not just the forensic police had gone through that house, but also the regular police had gone through.

00:55:59.860 Like, turning over mattresses, throwing clothes around, like, ripping apart all of the house, looking for not DNA evidence, but other kinds of evidence.

00:56:09.940 And it was over 40 days that they were touching things and moving things around without gloves that they eventually then found the bra clasp under a rug somewhere completely different in Meredith's room and said,

00:56:25.340 Oh, here's our link, proving that Raphael was there in the room that night.

00:56:30.520 But, of course, there's no other trace of Raphael in that room.

00:56:34.720 How could he have participated in sexual assault and murder and only left one trace along with two unknown males?

00:56:41.900 Meanwhile, like, there's a huge semen stain on the pillow found underneath Meredith's body that the prosecution decided not to test and refused to test.

00:56:54.180 Even when my defense and Raphael's defense asked for it to be tested, we're looking at a sexual assault case.

00:57:01.100 Meredith was raped before she was murdered, and they refused to test it.

00:57:06.340 And the only reason I can think of why is because they weren't interested in pursuing a case against a male. 0.71

00:57:15.340 They were interested in pursuing a case against me, and I don't produce semen, so it wasn't relevant to them.

00:57:22.800 Oh, my gosh.

00:57:23.360 This is so scary, you know?

00:57:25.620 The question I'm asking myself right now is, did you just have a terrible defense lawyer in the first trial?

00:57:30.460 Like, why wouldn't all of this have been persuasive first time around?

00:57:35.360 Well, that's a really good question because I don't think that I didn't have a good defense lawyer.

00:57:41.280 I think my lawyers pursued a very, very staunch defense in this case.

00:57:46.440 But what was happening was, you know, one of the things that I remember my lawyer saying was zero plus zero plus zero plus zero plus zero still equals zero.

00:57:57.460 There was this sense that the prosecution was throwing the kitchen sink at this case.

00:58:02.460 And so if there's all this stuff that is being thrown into this case and debated and talked about something, there must be some substance to it.

00:58:13.160 There must be Amanda's guilt is in there somewhere.

00:58:15.320 Even if we can't really determine which piece of evidence is the thing that does it, there's so much that's being thrown in there that there must be something to it.

00:58:23.820 And indeed, this is what and that got me convicted the second time, you know, after I was acquitted and the DNA evidence in that case with the bra clasp and the knife was thrown out, I was still tried for that same crime using this same kitchen sink approach where it's like, oh, Amanda confessed to the crime and all these witnesses say maybe they saw her or maybe they didn't.

00:58:46.980 Or how do you explain her? Or how do you explain her DNA in the bathroom? Like there's there was this sense of like this overwhelming if if the prosecution is so convinced, there must be something to it.

00:58:57.000 And it wasn't like I think it was really, really hard for people to, first of all, put themselves in my shoes and imagine what it's like to be.

00:59:06.820 In an interrogation room and coerced into signing statements as a 20 year old surrounded by adults speaking in a foreign language and without the assistance of a lawyer.

00:59:16.980 But I think also they couldn't really understand how the case could have gone this far if there wasn't something to it.

00:59:26.900 Well, especially back to our original point of the media, every headline telling them how awful you are. 0.92

00:59:32.280 You're just a terrible person. You're a freak. You're a devil worshiper. 1.00

00:59:35.320 You're I mean, just stuff completely made up. A massive manipulation was taking place by the media, of the media, by the prosecutor, of the people. 0.87

00:59:47.340 And people need to get smart. You know, they have to be their own advocates when it comes to information consumption.

00:59:53.820 If you want to willingly jump in and believe the tabloid headlines, just know what you're being fed. 0.99

00:59:59.120 You know, it's garbage in, garbage out. It remains such to this day. 0.99

01:00:03.060 So just the quick without getting into the lengthy procedural stuff.

01:00:06.480 I mean, so you were found guilty on nightmare. Then miraculously, it was reversed.

01:00:12.420 Yay. That's what we wanted. You were you got to fly home to Seattle.

01:00:15.840 It was like, thank God this horrible nightmare is over. I'm done. Whatever.

01:00:19.440 And then the innocence was reversed. It was overturned.

01:00:23.120 A new trial was ordered and you were found guilty again.

01:00:27.440 So this is your second time being found guilty.

01:00:29.960 And then thank God that guilty, that conviction was reversed again by Italy's highest court, this time for good.

01:00:38.980 And the court cited errors and omissions by the prosecutor, sensational failures by the investigator and his helpers and contaminated evidence.

01:00:51.820 I mean, ultimately, they saw what went on here and declared you not just not guilty, but you and Raffaele innocent that you did not commit this crime, which is huge.

01:01:04.100 I mean, in Italy's defense, that is something we don't do here.

01:01:07.440 And, you know, I'm sure a lot of people would like to see it.

01:01:10.520 Absolutely. And it's something that the Supreme Court never does.

01:01:13.480 That's why that clip at the very beginning, when you showed me reacting to them, it was because that wasn't even something that I dreamed was possible.

01:01:22.760 And of course, it's within their power, but it is such a rare thing for the Supreme Court to not just overturn a wrongful conviction, but to definitively acquit someone.

01:01:32.860 I'm really glad you talked about the media, because I think that, you know, like you said, to this day, we find criminal trials becoming politicized.

01:01:43.760 And instead of the media doing its job, which is to hold authorities and power to account, to hold them to a higher standard, to the truth, we instead find media who are selling us stories that we want to hear.

01:01:57.820 And that is the reason why I got into journalism myself, the reason why I'm an independent journalist who, you know, only has I the reason I have a podcast is because I have subscribers who believe in my work, like go to patreon.com slash Knox Robinson and you can do it.

01:02:15.660 But like, this is like, I'm not, you know, like, this is a world where you, you should, we all need to be a little more media literate, because the media is not doing what it's intended to do.

01:02:31.820 It is selling a story and it's going to sell the story that makes the most money, not the story that is the most truthful.

01:02:40.120 And that's true in mainstream media and not just tabloids.

01:02:46.360 That's what people may not realize.

01:02:48.620 One of the things I liked about the documentary is it pulled clips of so-called respected news anchors saying a lot of this stuff.

01:02:56.220 It wasn't just, you know, the star.

01:02:59.000 It was in the mainstream, these characterizations of you.

01:03:03.000 And that leads me to the unfortunate moment that you had with Chris Cuomo, who continued the character assassination in a bizarre interview he did with you.

01:03:13.800 We have the tape queued up.

01:03:15.900 It didn't do well at the time.

01:03:17.660 It was in 2013.

01:03:19.120 I was in the primetime at Fox at the time.

01:03:21.140 It hasn't aged well.

01:03:22.400 It looks even worse in retrospect.

01:03:23.660 And now it looks particularly bad knowing that he's been publicly accused of sexually harassing his former executive producer, of being such a bully to his female executive producer, a different woman, that she was forced to leave the show.

01:03:36.420 And now we have multiple allegations in the news today about him actively campaigning against the women who accused his brother, Andrew Cuomo.

01:03:45.060 CNN at this moment is reviewing his future at the company.

01:03:48.240 But here he is interviewing you in 2013, fresh off of all of this.

01:03:52.300 This is their theory, that you went in there for some kind of freaky sexual activity that went wrong and your roommate wound up dying.

01:04:02.500 Fair?

01:04:03.220 That's what they say.

01:04:04.060 That's what it is.

01:04:04.880 Forget the headlines.

01:04:06.160 That's the truth of the proposition, isn't it?

01:04:08.480 Is there truth to that proposition? 0.97

01:04:11.120 Were you into deviant sex? 0.89

01:04:13.260 Insensitive question, but hey, we got to get to what it is. 0.97

01:04:15.620 This fuels the doubt.

01:04:16.880 There's no evidence of that.

01:04:18.100 That's the theory.

01:04:19.000 Nox is into some freaky sexual things.

01:04:23.500 Do you have any type of experimental activities there you're embarrassed to talk about?

01:04:27.400 No.

01:04:30.480 Yeah, that doesn't age well, does it?

01:04:32.780 No.

01:04:33.560 Yeah.

01:04:34.040 You know, at the time, it's interesting, because at the time, I was putting up with a lot of that kind of thing from media.

01:04:41.540 I've learned a lot since then, and a lot of times people have said to me, you know, I have to ask you these, quote, hard questions because it's what's good for you.

01:04:51.300 You should have the chance to respond.

01:04:53.160 This is what's best for you.

01:04:55.160 And Chris Cuomo, among other people, said this to me as a sort of justification for pursuing this line of questioning towards me and questioning me in a frankly humiliating way.

01:05:09.300 And I believed him.

01:05:10.480 And the thing that I've realized now as a journalist myself is that he didn't actually have to pursue that line of questioning.

01:05:18.800 He could have instead called out that theory in the first place because, one, what my sexuality is ultimately has nothing to do with the crime.

01:05:28.620 There was no evidence that put me, that placed me at the crime scene.

01:05:32.100 So why is my sexuality being the thing that's on trial?

01:05:35.420 And instead, I thought that this was an opportunity to point out that there is a whole lot of smoke that is deeply irresponsible and is the deeply irresponsible storytelling that gets in the way of justice.

01:05:52.500 So, you know, when I think about the kinds of like the way that I interview people on Labyrinths, I know what the stories are about them.

01:06:00.120 That doesn't interest me.

01:06:01.440 What interests me is the story that you can unearth that is true and just and puts the person who you're looking at, gives them a sense of voice and ownership over their own story.

01:06:14.480 The way that I was questioned in that interview was, again, putting me, making me have to respond to other people's stories about me instead of giving me the opportunity to tell my own story.

01:06:26.780 Which he would have known, which he would have known with just a minor bit of homework, had absolutely no factual basis.

01:06:32.960 There was nothing to it and there never had been.

01:06:35.440 It would take you about two minutes of a Google search to know that.

01:06:39.360 I believe what he was trying to do was gin up a sexy moment of him pushing this beautiful, smart, famous woman on, you know, her sex life and whether it's deviant in a way that he thought would get clicks or eyeballs or generate something good for him.

01:06:56.000 Mama, that's what that was about. 0.99

01:06:57.640 That's one of the reasons why I find it so infuriating.

01:07:00.460 It's maddening to watch that.

01:07:01.940 It's not like having somebody who's actively on trial for their life.

01:07:04.960 They're accused of committing a murder.

01:07:06.460 And you say, were you at the crime scene?

01:07:08.640 Did you do that?

01:07:09.400 Yes, of course you have to do that.

01:07:11.220 What he asked you wasn't necessary.

01:07:13.040 It was intentionally salacious.

01:07:14.660 He was I don't know if he was trying to embarrass you, but he was trying to promote himself at your expense, just like everyone before him had done to you so many times.

01:07:23.600 And presenting it to me as the opportunity to address it head on, I think was, when I look back on it now, disingenuous because it's, again, not asking me to talk about the way that I was wrongly portrayed and how my sexuality was used to vilify me.

01:07:46.660 It was instead putting me on the spot and asking me to sort of respond to what was presented as a kind of legitimate question and a legitimate reason to suspect me.

01:07:59.180 So, you know, tone, Amanda, I mean, the tone, right?

01:08:01.840 Like an insensitive question, but it's got to be like just the way you approach somebody who's been victimized the way you have.

01:08:08.220 You've been victimized.

01:08:09.040 Whether you want to call yourself a victim or not, you've been victimized.

01:08:12.120 Raffaele has to Meredith, obviously, is not that way.

01:08:16.660 You know, this is I remember when I interviewed Tara Reid, Joe Biden's accuser.

01:08:19.420 She said she gave the interview to me because she wanted somebody who was, quote, trauma informed.

01:08:23.980 And I don't know whether Tara Reid was telling the truth about Joe Biden or not, but I understood she was making the allegations and how to treat somebody like that respectfully while asking about their story and sensitively.

01:08:35.080 Right. And being careful, being ginger while still being a good reporter.

01:08:39.220 And it's no wonder she had turned down CNN and gee, no wonder why she turned on Chris Wallace.

01:08:43.880 I'm not surprised by that one either.

01:08:45.340 I just feel like reporters that that was about him.

01:08:49.140 And too often they make it about themselves in their pocketbooks and they have no thought for the pain that they continue to inflict on innocent people like you.

01:08:57.280 So it goes on. You know, I wonder what you saw, what you thought when you saw like the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse and all the jumping the gun about him.

01:09:06.900 You know, we had so many press errors.

01:09:09.760 The Kyle Rittenhouse trial, I mean, I think I have a sort of unpopular opinion from, you know, I run in liberal circles and I do a lot of social justice.

01:09:19.460 But I do think that like people really wanted Kyle Rittenhouse to be a villain and they weren't a lot of people weren't willing to take the evidence of the case seriously.

01:09:32.240 And instead, we're trying to convict him based upon us, like their interpretation of his character.

01:09:38.960 And I think it was radically, radically irresponsible of the prosecutor to charge him with murder in the first place, because, you know, why like this?

01:09:47.720 This was not a murder case. If you don't like, you know, there there's an interesting discussion to be had about like, OK, if you walk into a really highly charged emotional space that's uncontrolled and you walk into that space with a gun, are you provoking an attack?

01:10:03.360 And I can see from the perspective of of his, you know, the people who were shot that, like, yeah, if you see someone, you hear shots around and you see a guy with a gun, you might think, oh, my gosh, I got to stop the shooter from shooting people.

01:10:15.080 But that doesn't mean that Kyle Rittenhouse did not have the right to defend himself if he was not shooting people.

01:10:21.760 And if you don't like the way that the laws are written, then you like if you don't like the self-defense law, then you can you can go to your legislature and say that you don't believe in self-defense.

01:10:32.040 But like, I think that with the Kyle Rittenhouse case, there was so much focus on irrelevant information and character assassination instead of the specific actions that led up to this tragic moment, which isn't to say that, like, I think that Kyle Rittenhouse should be celebrated as a hero either, because, you know, that's, again, playing him as a political football.

01:10:53.940 He's a kid who made a mistake, but he doesn't deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison for it.

01:10:58.760 Yeah, there's some similarities in the cases in that, you know, he didn't have quite as much coverage as you did.

01:11:05.040 And his his story didn't go on as long.

01:11:06.980 But he had the president of the United States, now president, then candidate, calling him a white supremacist.

01:11:12.140 I mean, talk about poisoning the jury pool. 0.98

01:11:14.280 And there is no evidence for that.

01:11:16.440 You know, I mean, even I at the beginning, I'm like, oh, well, they said he was with the Proud Boys and he was making racist symbols.

01:11:21.820 And we've actually taken a hard look at it on the show more than once.

01:11:24.860 And there's just it's that's not that's not what happened.

01:11:27.220 He went into a bar where they were.

01:11:28.700 They came over.

01:11:29.320 They asked for a picture with him.

01:11:30.480 He posed.

01:11:31.380 And then they all did the OK sign, which Kyle Rittenhouse, his lawyers presented to the judge and the prosecution had nothing to debunk it.

01:11:38.520 He didn't even know what that was.

01:11:39.400 He thought it was an OK sign, which it's been since the beginning of time.

01:11:43.360 There was nothing, nothing on his social media.

01:11:45.160 They scoured him.

01:11:46.060 The Anti-Defamation League apparently did an investigation.

01:11:48.200 The prosecutors looked at all of his cell phones, all of his social media, nothing, didn't follow a white supremacist, didn't know a white supremacist.

01:11:54.280 It was a lie.

01:11:55.980 And so people are still confused about him and want him in jail because they think he hates people of color.

01:12:00.300 There's no evidence.

01:12:01.280 Right.

01:12:01.480 At some point, you have to say, show me the evidence.

01:12:05.020 And if they cannot, we as a responsible society have to move on.

01:12:10.300 Absolutely.

01:12:10.620 And also, I would say that, like, whether or not he knows that he was doing an OK sign or a white supremacist sign is ultimately irrelevant in the same way that, like, if I were a professional dominatrix at the time that Meredith was murdered, it also would not have made a difference.

01:12:28.360 It's irrelevant to the question of whether or not he's guilty of murder.

01:12:32.480 That's right.

01:12:33.720 So much more to go over with Amanda.

01:12:35.520 Really enjoying this conversation.

01:12:36.860 I hope you are, too.

01:12:37.440 You're welcome.

01:13:07.440 Insurance, investments, advice.

01:13:12.900 So I wanted to ask you on the subject, because you, as you point out, you travel in social justice circles, and I know you've connected with the Innocence Project, which is brilliant.

01:13:19.980 That's perfect.

01:13:21.700 That plus your job as a journalist.

01:13:23.540 I love it.

01:13:24.140 I love what you're carving out for yourself.

01:13:25.740 But one of the things I've been hot on basically my whole career is what's happening to college men on college campuses.

01:13:34.480 And obviously, neither you nor I want to see young women get sexually assaulted on college campuses.

01:13:40.720 But I also don't want to see due process taken away from the young men who get accused.

01:13:44.860 And that's what's happened.

01:13:46.680 Right.

01:13:46.900 Obama did it where and now Joe Biden's trying to bring it back.

01:13:50.560 Trump sort of righted the ship and Biden's trying to bring it back.

01:13:53.600 It's deeply problematic.

01:13:55.120 Democrats and Republicans need to pay attention because the way it was and the way Biden wants it to be.

01:13:59.640 Mr. Biden wants it to be is no right to counsel, no right to cross examination, no right to discovery.

01:14:05.440 You get tried in front of a kangaroo court stacked with, quote, victims rights advocates and not like an independent body who might be open minded to the fact that you might not be accused.

01:14:16.460 And if you lose as a young man, you're expelled.

01:14:18.940 You're labeled a sex offender.

01:14:20.120 Good luck getting into another college.

01:14:21.460 And it's near impossible to appeal.

01:14:23.600 Your thoughts on it.

01:14:26.020 Yeah, great.

01:14:26.940 So I'm not actually familiar with what Biden is doing currently.

01:14:29.900 But what I can say about this is I remember at the very beginning of the Me Too movement, which I do think was an incredibly important moment of like reckoning with the fact that this happens over and over and over again to young or to women in general, not even just young women.

01:14:44.540 But a lot on college campuses is I remember my friend, Brian Banks, who tweeted like, yes, you know, we need to be taking these accusations really seriously and doing what we can to prevent sexual assault from happening.

01:14:58.660 But also here I am, a young man who was wrongly accused of sexual assault based solely on a young woman's accusation.

01:15:07.560 And I went to prison and for that crime.

01:15:10.740 And that is unfair.

01:15:13.140 Like due process still is incredibly important.

01:15:16.140 And while we need to take sexual assault accusations extremely seriously, that does not mean that we don't take sexual assault accusations for the person who's being accused not seriously.

01:15:28.880 Like it there is a difficult balancing act of not just fairness, but also safety that needs to be brought into consideration.

01:15:36.820 And we can't pretend that if someone who is accused, that means they're necessarily guilty.

01:15:43.560 You are living proof that when due process starts getting eroded in the name of something, right, prosecutorial zeal, a desire by the prosecution to be loved by the community for having made an arrest.

01:15:58.640 Or now, you know, you know, it could be different things from pushing of other cultural agendas.

01:16:04.120 It's it can be devastating, unfairly devastating on the person targeted.

01:16:08.400 And we just can't start throwing away lives in the name of causes.

01:16:12.640 You know, there's a reason we want the justice system to to follow the procedures we put in place long, long ago.

01:16:18.100 That's the only way we can count on it to work.

01:16:20.580 Well, that's why I think that sexual education is so important, because like one of the reasons why these things happen, especially on college campuses, is because these are highly charged sexual environments with young people who don't have a ton of experience sexually, who are who are, you know, pushing boundaries for the first time, exploring themselves and others.

01:16:41.720 And of course, there are going to be slip ups and mistakes on both sides in terms of communication, both physical and and verbal.

01:16:49.460 So I think that these are complex situations that require us to have sophisticated conversations about them instead of treating them as black and white narratives.

01:17:01.360 Absolutely.

01:17:02.760 OK, a couple of random questions for you, just following up on on the information.

01:17:06.880 I read that you wrote to the prosecutor.

01:17:09.080 You wrote to him.

01:17:11.560 So I can't speak a ton on this because I promised him I wouldn't.

01:17:16.760 But yes, I am in communication with Giuliano Mignani.

01:17:21.380 Wow.

01:17:22.540 I tip my hat to you, Amanda.

01:17:24.440 I don't know if I could do it.

01:17:26.020 I mean, I see you because I see you being very generous toward any everybody involved in the case, even Rudy, even Rudy, who's now out of prison and stirring up trouble again.

01:17:35.220 He's trying to bring you back into it, pointing the finger at you, which we all know is nonsense.

01:17:38.400 But you've been very generous.

01:17:40.040 I don't know if I could find it in me to be generous toward Mignani.

01:17:42.700 Yeah, the biggest thing for me has always been wanting to understand why, why this happened to me and why these things happen.

01:17:52.040 And I don't find like the more I I sort of understand the way human minds work, the less impulse I have to just like to hate people or anything.

01:18:02.620 And it's more I get a sense of like, OK, I understand why you think you did the right thing in that moment.

01:18:11.900 But I the next step beyond that is, can we then arrive at a place of reconciling the truth that may be something that makes someone have to reevaluate themselves as a human being?

01:18:26.680 And that's tricky. I mean, that is the ultimate labyrinth is you believe that you are one thing and you turn out to be another.

01:18:35.100 And someone tries to point that out to you.

01:18:36.940 And I, you know, I as someone who has been a victim of the criminal justice system and also an indirect victim of crime, like I understand that these things are complicated.

01:18:46.640 And the the most important thing that we can do when someone is hurt, when someone is harmed is to acknowledge that harm.

01:18:53.700 But of course, that means that we have to reevaluate ourselves and our actions in light of new evidence.

01:19:00.300 Hmm. Let me know how that works out.

01:19:02.540 Yeah, I will talk about Rudy. Let's talk about Rudy. Rudy finally got out of jail.

01:19:08.800 He served 16 years. That was a reduction of sentence for him.

01:19:12.040 He comes out and and apparently spoke to the son.

01:19:15.220 His message to Meredith's family was that he's so sorry for their loss.

01:19:18.960 He says he's written a letter to her family that explains how sorry he is, quote, for not doing enough to save her that night to save her.

01:19:27.040 He says the court convicted me of being an accessory to murder purely because my DNA was there.

01:19:31.360 But the legal documents say others were there and that I did not inflict the fatal wounds.

01:19:36.340 He's pointing the finger at you, saying Amanda Knox, quote, knows the truth.

01:19:41.060 So your response to him is what?

01:19:44.480 Well, it's a complicated one. I have a whole episode of Labyrinths called The Forgotten Killer,

01:19:48.620 where I discuss him being released from prison and never having been found fully accountable for his crimes and also for my name to be the name that is most associated with his crime.

01:20:00.800 Yes. Yes. So true.

01:20:03.880 So first of all, I have to to point my gaze, my critical gaze on the tabloid media who has decided to give a platform to a rapist and murderer in order for him to continue to harm others by lying and allowing other peoples to take responsibility for his crime.

01:20:23.480 So shame on the son, shame on Nick Pisa for the platforming and amplifying his lies, damaging my reputation and honestly just putting the Kircher family through yet more, you know, loops of pain like this, that shame on them.

01:20:41.500 But for Rudy Gaudet, I honestly have to say that, like, I was almost rooting for him a little bit, like here's someone who spent 13 years in prison.

01:20:53.160 I had hoped that he had rehabilitated in some kind of capacity. And while I could, you know, he has over the years, ever since he was arrested, taken the opportunity of the prosecution's unfair gaze on me and use that, exploited that opportunity in order to not be fully held accountable for his actions.

01:21:16.740 I thought that if he had more time and distance from his crimes, that he would have had a more mature response.

01:21:24.560 And instead, I believe that he's just continuing to do what he's done since the day he was arrested, which is to exploit the way that this case has been misrepresented and and to try to continue to have me be taken,

01:21:40.140 to have me take the burden of his crimes onto my life so that he can continue on with his as if nothing's wrong.

01:21:48.980 So, so glad you are out there speaking about it because you have a much bigger microphone than he does and people need to hear your message.

01:21:58.360 Thank you.

01:21:59.280 The Kircher family, I understand you have reached out to them.

01:22:04.380 Um, in various ways and various times over the years, it's a, it's a delicate issue, right? Because I, as far as I know, they do still associate me with Meredith's death in some way or another.

01:22:19.620 And that's not their fault in the sense that like, too, they were misled, too.

01:22:24.540 And it's a very, very difficult thing to look at objectively when it's someone that you lost that you care about so much.

01:22:31.760 And so I have let them know through various channels that I am, I understand, I understand I, that there's this great potential for healing if we can connect and grieve about this incredible injustice and tragedy that links us forever.

01:22:51.320 Um, that said, I also don't want to put them on the spot and I'm, I'm always hesitant to talk about this when people ask me because I don't want to put them on the spot and make them feel like they have to respond to me.

01:23:02.740 That is not the way that you achieve healing.

01:23:05.920 So, um, you know, I'm, I want them to know that I'm there and ready whenever they are ready.

01:23:13.920 I wonder if it's even harder for someone to get past their beliefs in a situation like this, when the imprint that was made on them happened during their most vulnerable time of life, you know, when they were at their weakest, hurting their worst.

01:23:27.720 That's when, you know, this prosecutor, the press misled them so severely, all the information pointing in the wrong direction.

01:23:36.140 It's probably even harder to come back to stasis where you can take in truth and see, you know, separate the wheat from the chaff.

01:23:43.540 Um, when, when it, you know, the damage that was done to you was done in, in those circumstances.

01:23:50.740 You know, it's actually a really fascinating theory because they call that like cognitive opening and, um, you know, that's, that's something that they talk about with like the radicalization of people to, um, terrorism where something bad happens to them.

01:24:04.980 Some tragedy happens to a person like a sister or a daughter dies and suddenly your mind, like your, your sort of feeling of security and place and, and your foundations in, in the world are shook.

01:24:19.080 And you then latch on to a new ideology because it sort of gives you a new sense of purpose and, um, stability. 0.95

01:24:29.440 And I think you're, you're maybe right that in that moment of intense vulnerability, they latched on to the ideology that the prosecution put forth to them, which is that I am an evil whore who was jealous of their daughter and murdered her for it. 0.97

01:24:47.060 And it's like, the truth is right there. 0.95

01:24:50.340 And I think once they come to terms with it, they'll, they'll somehow feel better.

01:24:56.320 I bet it would be a nice moment for the two of you like to come together because you were her friend.

01:25:00.800 I'm sure she cared for you and you cared for her and that all that gets lost entirely.

01:25:05.400 Right.

01:25:05.740 I mean, you've, have you ever had the chance to grieve the loss of your friend?

01:25:11.360 That's a really great question.

01:25:13.520 Um, and I, I always appreciate it when someone tells me like, I'm sorry, um, your friend was lost because that's something that not a lot of people say to me.

01:25:22.760 Like, I'm sorry that your friend was murdered that way.

01:25:26.400 Um, and I do look forward to the day that I get to visit her grave.

01:25:32.980 I just don't want to do that without the permission of her family.

01:25:36.580 And so I'm, that's something that remains, uh, a, a deep desire and goal for me.

01:25:42.900 Yeah.

01:25:43.120 Oh my goodness.

01:25:44.080 It's so complicated.

01:25:46.020 You know, I've been thinking about you a lot lately and I, and I thinking about everything you've been through.

01:25:52.120 It's like, in a way you were given a huge hefty gift of wisdom, wisdom early in your life, you know, like you learn so much about police and law enforcement and, you know, the justice system, um, media about human nature.

01:26:09.760 Yeah.

01:26:10.020 Yes.

01:26:10.480 Yes.

01:26:10.860 Right.

01:26:11.080 Human nature and the importance of family, right.

01:26:13.660 And the support and all that.

01:26:14.820 But it makes me want to ask you whether, like, if you could undo, of course you would undo what happened in Meredith, but if you could undo what happened to you, would you?

01:26:26.080 You know, that is a question that I never ask myself because none of us ever, ever, ever get to choose that.

01:26:35.560 And instead, I think my goal, um, with my, my life and also my, on my work now with labyrinths is to look at how, when we are at our most lost, how do we find our way out and what do we gain in the process?

01:26:51.160 Because, of course, there is the opportunity to lose so much, but there's also so much to gain in whatever struggle that you are going through.

01:27:01.500 Post-traumatic growth is a real thing, just as much as post-traumatic stress is.

01:27:06.820 And we all have the ability with a sort of mindfulness to examine whatever it is that life throws at us and try to make the best out of it.

01:27:16.380 Um, and I'm always, always, always fascinated by the stories of people who similarly find themselves in different situations of feeling lost or the existential crisis of their life isn't what they thought it was going to be.

01:27:28.560 And they found their way somehow.

01:27:31.520 Um, it's, it's great to hear you say that.

01:27:34.340 I completely agree with you, but it's, it's great too, to see, you know, people, you get upset, you lose a job or you don't get that house you really wanted or what, whatever it is.

01:27:44.120 Like, have you been convicted of murder when you didn't do it and sat in a foreign country thinking, I will never get out of here.

01:27:53.260 I will never get married.

01:27:54.680 I will never have children.

01:27:56.100 I will never be able to hug my family again.

01:27:58.280 Like that is next level stress.

01:28:02.440 When you look back on it, you know, what do you, what would you say was the lowest moment?

01:28:07.080 Was it when you heard guilty in Italian or was it a different time, like sitting back in the prison cell?

01:28:13.220 No, the scariest, scariest moment was in that interrogation room when I was made to, I was, I started to doubt my own sanity.

01:28:24.580 That was the scariest moment for me in this entire process.

01:28:28.340 It was the one where I felt the most vulnerable and, um, and then years later, I still felt a ton of self-blame until someone finally presented me with the actual truth about coercive interrogation techniques.

01:28:44.080 I had no idea.

01:28:45.340 Like the, I think the thing that makes innocent people so vulnerable to wrongful conviction is the idea of being wrongly convicted is not on our radar.

01:28:55.600 Like we'll, like, we'll, our minds will come up with any other explanation for why this bad thing is happening to us, including self-blame.

01:29:03.460 And especially when the world is blaming you, it's very easily, easy to believe the rest of the world that you're just, there's something wrong with you.

01:29:10.860 And I'm really grateful to those who are dedicating all like their careers to studying this and revealing the truth about these, these processes.

01:29:20.440 And in the meantime, like, you know, I'm not one to compare tragedies because I can't tell you, like I interviewed an, a ton of women for labyrinths about infertility and how they had lived their whole lives knowing that they were going to be parents.

01:29:37.280 They were going to be mothers.

01:29:38.860 And suddenly they were faced with the realization that, oh my gosh, I'm struggling with this.

01:29:44.920 And oh my gosh, am I ever, is it ever going to happen?

01:29:47.280 And how you have to retell yourself who you are in light of these kinds of struggles is real.

01:29:55.200 And, um, and is like some of those interviews that I had with those women are some of the most emotionally impactful interviews that I've ever had with people.

01:30:04.560 Wow.

01:30:05.320 I know you lived some of that yourself.

01:30:07.500 You did just have a baby girl.

01:30:10.380 I mean, you just had her, right?

01:30:12.040 Is she even two years old? 0.88

01:30:12.760 Oh yeah, like I still have like throw up on me a little bit.

01:30:15.560 Oh my gosh.

01:30:16.520 I mean, she doesn't, you, first of all, you look amazing.

01:30:19.420 So she's healthy.

01:30:20.860 Eureka, right?

01:30:21.580 Her name is Eureka.

01:30:22.740 I love it.

01:30:23.140 You're now Mrs. Robinson.

01:30:24.780 Um, and you and, and your husband does the podcast with you.

01:30:29.400 Absolutely.

01:30:30.040 Yes.

01:30:30.300 So we are a co-host co-producers.

01:30:32.660 We do everything ourselves.

01:30:33.880 We do not have like a team of people behind us.

01:30:36.960 We are independent.

01:30:38.580 We are ad free.

01:30:39.840 Um, so if anyone wants to become a patron to support our work, that's how we do what we do.

01:30:45.900 Wow.

01:30:46.400 All right.

01:30:46.640 So I've got to ask, like, what it, was it awkward or difficult to find, you know, love after all of this?

01:30:52.680 I mean, all this stuff that's been said about you.

01:30:54.740 And I, like, I would imagine there was enormous pressure on him.

01:30:57.840 Like, Oh God, I don't know, you know, how to act or how to be.

01:31:01.660 Well, you know what?

01:31:02.800 Chris is, um, an incredibly, it was the perfect person for me to meet because he's not a true crime guy.

01:31:09.340 He didn't follow the case.

01:31:10.640 Um, when he started, when he became friends with me, we were friends at first, like other people would come up to him and ask him, like, do you think she did it or didn't she do it?

01:31:18.560 And he was like, look, I'm not interested in that lens through which to view her.

01:31:22.560 I'm interested in this person that I met like a regular person and how we interact.

01:31:27.480 And, of course, eventually when we started dating officially and people noticed, um, and started photoshopping knives into pictures of him and making claims about what kind of person he was to even associate with me, he did eventually do the Google search and read, um, read all the case, you know, the case files and read my book and do all the research so he could be informed.

01:31:48.920 But that wasn't the lens through which he first viewed me.

01:31:53.320 And it's been, you know, that's the ongoing struggle.

01:31:56.360 Like, I am, for better or for worse, for worse, defined by a crime that I had nothing to do with.

01:32:05.200 I am defined by someone else's horrific actions.

01:32:09.100 And as much as I try to put good work out into the world, to this day, that is not what people know me for.

01:32:16.660 And so that's, that's sort of my ongoing struggle is trying to acknowledge my experience and put my perspective to good work and not allow others to use my experience and exploit my story for their own ends and at my expense.

01:32:35.580 Yeah, I know, I'm, I, Raphael, you've spoken publicly about the same feelings for him and difficulties he's faced because of the media storm and the unfair conviction.

01:32:45.560 And, um, I loved what the New York Times, I will, I'll give a shout out to the New York Times, what they said about you in, in doing the story.

01:32:53.180 I think it was about the birth of your daughter, but they were saying Amanda Knox's legal purgatory has ended.

01:32:58.000 Her cultural purgatory has not, and it needs to, I mean, you're not the only one who should be fighting for truth here.

01:33:06.640 The people who put you in this position, um, which includes the media need to do their part and not, and certainly not pile on and continue the abuse.

01:33:16.460 But to, to say what we know is true, which is you had nothing to do with this crime.

01:33:20.340 We know who committed this crime.

01:33:21.580 His name is Rudy Gaudet.

01:33:22.920 He's served a sentence that was rather close to a slap on the wrist.

01:33:27.080 And what I pray for now is for people to realize that for you to have health and wellness and, and many more children, if that's what you want, keep telling your story and keep helping others.

01:33:37.600 I feel like there's a reason you've been through this and I feel like we're all starting to see what it is.

01:33:43.580 Oh, thank you so much, Megan.

01:33:45.040 It's been such a, such pleasure to talk to you.

01:33:47.380 I, um, I really appreciate it.

01:33:49.480 Thank you.

01:33:49.860 Oh, thank you.

01:33:50.940 I, I really admire you, Amanda.

01:33:52.760 Uh, I hope we talk again.

01:33:54.140 Wow.

01:33:54.480 Um, listen, I want to tell you before we go to coming up tomorrow, don't miss it.

01:33:57.860 Senator Rand Paul is here to talk Fauci and COVID.

01:34:01.000 See you then.

01:34:04.080 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - November 30, 2021

Amanda Knox on Media Bias and Sensationalism, Reclaiming Her Name, and Motherhood and Marriage ｜ Ep. 211

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