Amanda Marie Knox (born July 10, 1987, Seattle, Washington) is an American author who was imprisoned without bail bond in Italy for 4 years during the trial and acquittal of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, her British college housemate, in Perugia, Italy. On October 3, 2011, she was cleared of murder after an appeal trial. The sentence was declared invalid in March 2013. She was sentenced to 28 years and six months in jail in late January 2014.[1] Her murder conviction was overturned for a final appeal in March 2015. Knox wrote about her treatment by Italian authorities and her prison problems in her 2013 memoir, Waiting to Be Heard.[2]
Knox was, at the time of the murder, a 20-year-old University of Washington language student who shared a flat with Kercher. She was in Perugia attending the University for Foreigners for one year, studying Italian, German and creative writing.[3] Knox met her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito at a classical music concert held on October 25, 2007,[4] which she attended with Kercher at the University for Foreigners. When Kercher left at the intermission, Sollecito met Knox.[5]
Knox and her boyfriend Sollecito were put on trial. At the time of the murder on November 1, 2007, Kercher's house keys, rent money of 300 euros (~$450), and 2 mobile phones had been missing, but the phones were found in the bushes by a neighbor, several blocks away, when Knox called Kercher's numbers the next morning after finding the front door ajar. The prosecution claimed a knife fight with Sollecito had begun after Knox and Kercher had argued about the stolen rent money, as stated by convicted suspect Rudy Guede (whose DNA was found on the body and purse).[6] However, Amanda Knox had over $4,000 in her bank account at the time, and said she had no motive.[6] Sollecito's DNA was found in the kitchen ashtray and outside Kercher's door frame, where he tried to push the door, but not inside the room nor on the body. Sollecito was sent to prison for 25 years, and Knox for 26 years.
They both appealed their sentences.[7]
At the first appeal trial in 2011, a man claimed to have seen Knox and Sollecito by a town square near the house that night, when other people were wearing costume masks, but Halloween had been 2 nights earlier, not the night of the murder. The first appeal verdict was given on October 3, 2011,[8] and Knox and Sollecito were freed from prison on that date.
In January 2014, Amanda Knox and her prior lover Rafael Sollecito were again found guilty by the Italian higher court, which overturned the first appeal. Sollecito was stopped by Italian Police when he tried to cross the border with Austria, after the verdict.
In March 2015, at their fourth trial, Knox and Sollecito were acquitted of Kercher's murder by Italy's top appeal court. Despite being cleared of the murder charge, the guilty verdict against Knox for the slander of Patrick Lumumba - a bar owner she falsely accused of the crime - has been upheld.[9]
