Amanda Knox Profile picture
Jul 7, 2021 27 tweets 14 min read Read on X
I live in two overlapping worlds. In one, I’m seen as a monster. In the other, people value my work.

/ A thread.
One of these worlds is based in reality. The other is not, and yet that false world often feels stronger, ineradicable.
The day I was acquitted and released from prison, I thought I had escaped the labyrinth.
I thought I would return to the life that had been stolen from me…I quickly realized that life didn’t exist anymore.
I was no longer just me, a language nerd who liked poetry and rock climbing. I was the girl who was accused of murder.
And in millions of minds, I was not just accused, but guilty. I was redefined as a killer. My innocence didn’t change that.
When I was definitively acquitted by Italy’s highest court, I was freed from a physical prison...
...but not from the prison of infamy, not from the false identity as a drug-addled whore and killer.
The accusations and hate didn’t stop.
It’s been 4,993 days since I was first arrested. 4,993 consecutive days of hate.
For a while, I felt so, so lost. Entering freedom, I had landed in an entirely new labyrinth.
And inside, I had to discover who I was.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its…
What I’ve gone through is unique, but also...
...not unique at all. Plenty of people have been wrongfully convicted - mostly poor, disenfranchised men.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/exo…
And I’m not the first to be globally slut-shamed (shout out to @monicalewinsky)
I never asked for attention, for scrutiny, to be cast as a cardboard character in a morality play for tabloid readers and true crime junkies.
But here I am. Trying to figure out how to play the strange hand I’ve been dealt...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…
...to make the best of a bad situation, and put to work everything I’ve learned along the way...
...to practice the nuance and compassion and empathy that was denied me by those eager to vilify and punish.
So I’ve been building bridges, talking to victims and vilified men and women, advocating for criminal justice reform.
But the thing I’m most proud of is Labyrinths, the podcast I created with my novelist husband @manunderbridge. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this work and meet other survivors along the way.
And nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to know that I’ve reached someone.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its…
That someone else feels less alone in their own labyrinth.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mon…
It helps me shrug the hate off. To remember that it doesn’t define me.
I define me.
Season 2 of Labyrinths premieres today with episode 1 of a 5-part miniseries on infertility. In today’s episode, I bare my soul about my recent miscarriage.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inf…
I hope you’ll listen. And if you like the podcast, please consider supporting us! We’re independent and ad-free. If we had one supporter for every hundred cruel messages that come in, that would more than balance out the hate.

patreon.com/knoxrobinson

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More from @amandaknox

Sep 27
It’s been an ugly, bloody week for the US. Alabama just executed Alan Miller, which makes five men executed since Sept 20th. We need to abolish the death penalty. Here’s a dozen reasons why. /Thread
#1. We end up executing the innocent. The evidence against Marcellus Williams, executed by Missouri on Tuesday, hinged on unreliable witness testimony. None of the DNA or fingerprints from the crime scene matched him.
The DA and the victim’s family opposed his death sentence. But the Missouri AG, @AGAndrewBailey, and Governor Mike Parson, @GovParsonMO, executed him anyway.
Read 49 tweets
Sep 23
Marcellus Williams will be executed on Sept 24--despite plenty of evidence of his innocence, the prosecutor's confession of racial bias, and opposition from the victim's family--unless Governor Mike Parsons (@GovParsonMO) finds his conscience. /🧵 Image
Marcellus Williams has been on death row for 23 years proclaiming his innocence for the murder of reporter Felicia Gayle in 1998. The crime scene had tons of forensic evidence: fingerprints, footprints, hair, and even DNA on the murder weapon. None of it matches Williams.
The prosecution's entire case was based on incentivized witness testimony from two people with pending criminal charges who were offered leniency and reward money. Their testimony didn't provide any new information, and was inconsistent with their own prior statements.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 14
The Italian justice system has been gaslighting me for 17 years now. It began during my interrogation, and it continues in the courts, most recently in the legal motivation released on August 8th which explains why they found me guilty of slander back in June. /🧵
This gaslighting is upsetting and triggering—hearing a judge offer illogical arguments, present falsehoods as facts, and label me a liar—but it also inspires me to keep fighting, because the police should be held accountable for their abuses of power.
This latest trial was to determine whether a single document—a note, or memoriale, I wrote to recant the two statements I was coerced into signing during my interrogation—was slanderous against my friend and employer, Patrick Lumumba.
Read 26 tweets
Jun 6
Yesterday, the Court of Appeals in Florence upheld my conviction for slander after I gave some emotional testimony. I came to Italy to show I wasn't afraid, to look the judge and jury in the eyes, and to hear the verdict from their own lips.
/thread
I'd like to share with you what I told the court in Italian before they sentenced me to 3 years in prison, punishing me yet again, for the harmful actions of others, punishing me for how the police victimized me. Here is my statement (originally delivered in Italian).
"A lot of people think that the worst night of my life was on December 4th, 2009, when I was convicted of a murder I didn’t commit and sentenced to 26 years in prison. But it wasn’t. The worst night of my life was on November 5, 2007.
Read 27 tweets
May 12
After four days of questioning at the police station, I spoke with my mom on the phone. I told her I was fine, that I was helping the police, but her mom instincts were telling her something was off. She bought the first plane ticket to Italy that she could.

/Thread
The cops had tapped my phone, so they knew she was coming to my aid. Soon, I wouldn't be alone and vulnerable, soon I might even have a lawyer. That was the night they decided to break me.
My mom landed in Rome while I was being interrogated overnight, slapped, yelled at, and gaslit. My phone was on the table, ringing. I desperately wanted to answer it. They wouldn't let me.

She found out from the news the next day: her daughter had been arrested for murder.
Read 11 tweets
May 2
I'd been avoiding my friend Jens Söring for months. Whenever his emails arrived, I’d open a reply window and stare with dread at the blinking cursor. I no longer knew what to say to him, this man who'd spent 33 years in prison for a double homicide he swore he didn’t commit. /🧵
Jens had been convicted of murder in 1990. I had been convicted of murder nearly 20 years later. But the parallels between our cases were striking.
While studying abroad in Italy in 2007, I had been accused of killing my roommate Meredith Kercher with the help of a man I’d been dating for just a week.
Read 10 tweets

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