Amanda Knox continues to make headlines almost two decades after she was convicted – and later exonerated – for the murder of student Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007
Fifteen years ago, Amanda Knox was doing hard time for the murder of housemate Meredith Kercher before finally being cleared, and now she is back to relive the horror.
‘Foxy Knoxy’ as she was dubbed has travelled to the UK for the first time to promote her new documentary, Mouth of the Wolf, about the brutal murder and her fight to clear her name.
Speaking last night at an emotional public event the mum-of-two, who was acquitted of the 2007 slaying in Puglia, Italy, in 2015, expressed anger and grief over her treatment. The audience were due to also watch the documentary “Mouth of the Wolf” but the screening was called off at the last minute because of licensing issues. The documentary, directed by her husband Christopher Robinson, captures her return to the scene where Meredith was murdered.
Knox told the audience said she was devastated when first jailed she said: “I was looking at 26 years. I thought I’d never have children and I’d always wanted to be a mother.” She added: “I’m constantly compared to my dead friend.”
Knox went on: “You always feel like you’ve got something to prove – you’ve got to prove your innocence for the rest of your life. There is anger – there is grief and I still feel angry. My life was totally upended. A part of me died in Italy – this deep abyss in me will never go away. I have a love/hate relationship with Italy.”
She spent almost four years behind bars – from her arrest in November 2007 to her initial release in October 2011 – before being exonerated in 2015 after her conviction was overturned.
More than a decade on, she continues to attract a huge amount of public interest. And she still courts controversy – from her space-themed wedding and crowd funding criticism, to her friendship with another renowned former female prisoner, and her recent comments on Lucy Letby, we take a closer look at Amanda’s life now…
Prison uniform selfies
You might think that Amanda would want to avoid any reminders of her time in jail. So it came as a surprise when she posed for a photo wearing her old uniform from prison in January 2020.
In the run-up to her wedding day, Amanda shared a snap of herself clad in grey tracksuit bottoms, blue sweater and a beanie, telling her followers: “40 days left until the wedding and 267 tasks left on the wedding To Do list. I’ve locked myself in the craftroom and I’m wearing my old prison uniform.”
She continued: “Literally the very same sweatshirt and sweatpants I lived in in Casa Circondariale Capanne, Perugia.”
Unlikely friendships
Amanda is pals with another high profile former prisoner, Lorena Bobbitt – notorious for cutting off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis with a kitchen knife while he was asleep in bed in 1993. She then drove away, throwing the severed appendage out of the car window into a field, before alerting authorities where they could find it.
Lorena alleged that her husband had raped and abused her for years, something he denied. John was later acquitted of marital sexual assault, while Lorena was acquitted of her charge by reason of temporary insanity. She went on to start a foundation for domestic abuse victims and their children.
She and ‘Foxy Knoxy’ as she was once dubbed bonded after the latter invited Lorena to be on her podcast, The Truth About True Crime. “She’s been there – in the darkest moment of her life, through trials – and me, the same. So we feel that connection,” Lorena later told Good Morning America. “We’ve both been not only judged when we went to trials, but we’ve also been judged by society, by the media.”
Space-themed wedding
In 2020, Amanda and her husband Christopher Robinson tied the knot for the second time in a surreal space-themed wedding at Elks Lodge in Burien, Washington, complete with a ‘time machine’.
Instead of a traditional bridal gown, Amanda wore loose yellow pants and a gold waistcoat with sparkling face jewels and Princess Leia-style hair buns. Her poet groom Christopher, who had proposed with a piece of meteor, arrived wearing gold shoes and a yellow bow tie.
Guests were seen arriving wearing space-themed costumes, Renaissance, medieval or toga-style outfits. It’s thought some 100 people attended, with a source telling E! News at the time: “The groom and his friends spent the day setting up. They brought in a beer keg, ice, popcorn, potato salad and chips. They also had a Pompeii Wood Fired Pizza oven in the back to make personal pizzas. There were gold, silver and white balloon arches set up and many people wore shiny gold costumes to go with the colour theme.”
Amanda and Christopher Knox and Robinson legally tied the knot on December 1, 2018 – just two weeks after his November 2018 proposal, although news of their nuptials didn’t break until the following year.
Crowd-funding registry
At the time of their 2020 wedding, Amanda and Christopher faced criticism after setting up a crowdfunding wedding registry site for their (second) big day, rather than a traditional gift list. They explained: “Let’s face it, we don’t need any more stuff. So please, no gifts, and no pressure. But if you feel so inclined, we welcome help putting on the best party ever for our family and friends!”
Depending on how much they wished to give, guests – who could donate as much as £8,000 – were able to contribute towards ‘extravagant alien food’, special effects and costumes. By way of thanks, they received a copy of the couple’s joint volume of love poetry, The Cardio Tesseract.
Amanda later took to Twitter – now X – to address some of the criticism they received. She wrote: “To those hating on us all day, you’ve been duped by the outrage machine. You gave ad $ to tabloids that profit by making you angry about things that don’t matter. Our wedding will be crazy & fun & barebones if it needs to be, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.”
Unusual baby names
In August 2023, Amanda announced she was pregnant with her second baby by posing a photo on Instagram, showing her ‘pregspreading’ on a bench – a play on the term ‘manspreading’.
That November, on an episode of her parenting podcast Younglings, Amanda revealed that she had welcomed ‘perfect’ son Echo on September 23. Echo is a younger brother to Amanda and Christopher’s firstborn child, daughter Eureka Muse, who arrived in 2021.
Speaking about her children’s unusual names, Amanda shared: “When we were thinking of a name for baby number two, we wanted to keep going. We thought we had a really good method. We thought Eureka was an awesome name.
“We started thinking of what are other exclamations that could potentially be names… So when we’re thinking of like a name for a boy, Echo comes to mind in two ways, because ‘ecco’ in Italian means like ‘behold’ … and you say echo to say ‘echo, echo, echo.”
Lucy Letby support
Most recently, Amanda has raised eyebrows after revealing she has been conducting her own investigation into the case of Lucy Letby.
Former neonatal nurse Letby is currently serving 15 whole-life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital, between 2015 and 2016.
Amanda has written to Letby in prison and has even sent her a copy of her book. She said she would like to meet or speak to Letby. Amanda and her husband Chris are currently working on a podcast about Letby.
She claimed it had been an ‘eye-opening experience’ to investigate the nurse’s case. And she even revealed the couple had travelled from London to Chester to investigate further and interview people connected to the case. As well as writing to Letby, Amanda has also written to Letby’s parents.
Amanda, 38, said: “It’s been a very interesting, eye opening experience to investigate her case. Chris and I are producing a podcast series about the case. It’s called ‘Doubt – the case of Lucy Letby’. It’s a very, very in-depth investigation into this case.
“It’s an ongoing process. There’s going to be at least 13 episodes. But no I have not spoken to her personally. I did send her a copy of my book. I wrote her a letter. I’ve not talked to her personally. The focus of the podcast is not about her – it’s about the facts of the case which I think it really important.”
She added: “I like to remind people that I was an indirect victim of crime before I became a victim of the criminal justice system. I’m absolutely invested in getting the right people held accountable because I know so much about the criminal legal system. I actually might be a very valuable and fair juror.”
