Knox tries to make sense of years in Italian jail
Acquitted of killing roommate, journalist weighs ‘perfect storm.’
WEST PALM BEACH — I t t o o k Amanda Knox four years in prison before Italy’s supreme court set her free.
The 20-year-old American student was jailed abroad in 2007 after 53 hours of interrogation by a prosecutor with a hankering for psychics and conspiracy theories and a history of reopening closed cases, in a country were prosecutors can appeal a ruling.
Thrown into the mix: anti-Amer- ican sentiment that put public pressure on the prosecutor, linguistic difficulties that stood meanings on their heads and a manic tabloid press that painted “Foxy Knoxy” as a whore or psychotic femme fatale, or both. It left her vilified inside the court and objectified around the world, despite fingerprint evidence that led to the conviction of the real killer, a burglar. He got 16 years.
Knox, now a 29-year-old journalist, said at a luncheon of the Palm Beach County Bar Association on Wednesday that her 2015 acquittal in the murder of roommate Meredith Kercher left her not so much angry as determined to understand and communicate about the forces that kept her behind bars, 10,000 miles from home.
“I feel less alone when I’m communicating what I understand,” she said. “What made the perfect storm that brought just the right people together, to make what happened to me happen? What was going on in my prosecutor’s mind, in the media’s mind, in my own mind? What is it that makes people make mistakes or do the right thing?”
The hourlong talk, which at times brought her to tears as she recalled her and her family’s ordeal, drew a standing ovation from about 300 lawyers.
K n ox s a i d t h e s e d a y s s h e