0:02

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening

0:04

to Here's the Thing from My Heart

0:07

Radio. In two

0:09

thousand nine, Amanda Knox was

0:11

sentenced to twenty six years

0:14

in prison for a crime she didn't

0:16

commit. You probably remember

0:18

her case. Amanda was a foreign

0:21

exchange student in Perugia, Italy

0:23

in two thousand seven when her roommate

0:25

Meredith Kircher was raped and

0:28

murdered. Despite a lack of physical

0:30

evidence linking her to the crime, Knox

0:33

spent almost a decade of her life

0:35

stuck in the maze of the Italian

0:37

criminal justice system.

0:39

Amanda Knox is thirty three now

0:41

and lives in Seattle. Last

0:44

year, she and her husband launched a podcast

0:46

called Labyrinth. In December,

0:49

they put out a special episode to mark

0:51

the release from prison of Meredith

0:53

Kircher's actual killer, Rudy

0:55

Gooday. Well, thank

0:57

you for being here on this Labyrinth

1:01

with me. Should

1:04

he have gotten the life sentence, I

1:07

don't think so. I would not

1:09

wish an unreasonably harsh sentence

1:11

on anyone. I would wish them

1:13

only true rehabilitation. Good

1:16

Day's lawyers say he's well along

1:18

that path. Maybe so, but

1:21

I do know one thing. So long

1:23

as he refuses to admit his crimes

1:27

to show true regret, I

1:29

will continue to unjustly bear his

1:32

infamy, be held accountable

1:34

for the Kircher's grief, be

1:36

shamed for not showing remorse for

1:38

the day's crime. He

1:41

could end all that in a second.

1:45

Amanda Knox knows what it's like to

1:47

be stuck inside someone else's

1:49

preconception of you. So

1:52

the work that I'm doing now is I'm a podcaster,

1:55

I'm a journalist. I very often,

1:57

especially in my journalism and focusing on criminal

2:00

justice issues, not just wrongful conviction

2:03

issues, but more broad criminal

2:05

justice issues. I'm on the board of the Frederick Douglas

2:08

Project, which is working to build

2:10

bridges between the incarcerated population

2:12

and the non incarcerated population. So

2:15

I'm deeply interested in that

2:17

divide. But my podcast

2:20

work and Labyrinths being the podcast

2:22

that I've devoted so much energy and

2:24

love into this past year, um

2:27

is about how

2:29

people navigate being

2:32

lost. We just had a twelve

2:34

episode season that concluded

2:36

on January one with an interview

2:39

with LaVar Burton, which was super fun and

2:41

you discussed what with him. For example, we talked

2:43

about his career and how

2:45

he could have done a lot

2:47

of different things, like he how he was

2:49

on the path to becoming a Catholic priest

2:52

except that this one thing happened, and then

2:54

he very well could have gone into politics

2:56

except that this thing happened. You know, So we

2:59

had this really fun we we actually

3:01

had a lot of fun with that episode because Chris and I

3:03

decided to become super

3:05

nerdy and go sci fi, and we created

3:08

alternate dimensions where like we

3:10

talked to Catholic priest LeVar

3:12

Burton and politician Lear

3:14

Burton. He's so talented, he's a sweetheart,

3:17

he was so nice. But we cover a

3:19

lot of ground in the in the season, and

3:21

we go from anywhere from like super

3:23

super dramatic stories, like we

3:26

interviewed Samantha Geimer, who was the

3:29

fourteen year old girl who was raped by Roman Polanski.

3:32

Yeah, and how like interestingly

3:34

speaking of you know, people using

3:37

individual human beings like worst experiences

3:40

of their lives as entertainment

3:42

that they're entitled to and as

3:44

a prophet making machine. Like that was

3:46

her story. And she didn't

3:48

react the way or didn't want

3:50

the things that people expected a

3:52

rape victim to want, and so

3:54

they vilified her because she actually

3:57

wanted some kind of amicable resle

4:00

luction with Polanski, and they

4:02

themselves found amicable

4:04

resolutions behind closed

4:06

doors, while the rest

4:08

of society was still trying to churn up

4:11

this like victim and villain narrative.

4:13

What's the name of the podcast Labyrinths?

4:16

Labyrinths. There's actually a really

4:18

awesome comic that was drawn

4:21

and came out shortly after I got out

4:23

of prison, which showed me

4:27

escaping the labyrinth of the Italian

4:29

criminal justice system, and I felt

4:31

that that was a really beautiful metaphor. And

4:34

what I've found is that not

4:37

only is my own case,

4:39

you know, it's remarkable and unique in a lot

4:41

of ways, but it's also totally not remarkable

4:43

and unique in the sense that it has all the telltale

4:46

signs of wrongful convictions that happened

4:48

here in the United States. But also like

4:50

the feeling of going through

4:52

that experience of being lost and feeling

4:55

like there's this overpowering force

4:57

that's like you can't actually navigate and

5:00

troll. You're sort of like on this journey

5:02

and you don't know how it's going to end. That's

5:05

an experience that lots of people have.

5:07

I remember going back to school and

5:10

taking a poetry class, and there was a girl in

5:12

my poetry class who was really clicking

5:14

with my poetry. And I wasn't, you know, writing

5:16

explicitly like I'm Amanda

5:19

Knox. I was in prison for crime, but didn't

5:21

command it was. It was more just like very

5:23

emotional. And eventually

5:25

one day she figured out who I was and

5:29

she said, oh my god, you're Amanda Knox. And I

5:31

was like, oh, no, Like what Google rabbit

5:33

hole has she gone down now? And instead

5:35

she said, no, No, you don't understand. I

5:37

was gang raped when I was sixteen, and

5:40

the feeling of what you went

5:43

through feels like what

5:45

I went through when I was gang

5:47

raped at sixteen. And I

5:49

was like wow. So the

5:52

fact that, like I

5:54

said, I sit in this very weird position where

5:56

I'm a not very usual wrongfully

5:59

convicted per sin well,

6:01

I'm female, for one thing, who is usually

6:04

wrongfully convicted. People who are usually

6:06

wrongfully convicted tend to be, especially

6:08

in this country, tend to

6:10

be young men from

6:13

impoverished backgrounds and um,

6:15

young men of color. And that's because they can't

6:17

afford a good defense. I mean, that's

6:19

part of it. There's also a lot of

6:22

biases that go into it. Um,

6:24

there's a lot of sort of hysteria

6:26

around youth culture,

6:29

like even just issues with like gangs.

6:31

That's an issue where it's like, you know, a lot

6:33

of people don't understand that kids

6:36

just by virtue of living in a neighborhood

6:38

are sort of associated with gangs, even

6:41

if they have never committed a crime. And

6:43

so suddenly you're like in a gang book

6:45

and you're identifiable as a gang member.

6:47

But that's only because you happen to

6:49

live in that neighborhood, and you happen to associate

6:52

with a number of people who also live in that neighborhood.

6:55

You know, those kinds of things. But

6:57

the major thing is that the criminal justice

6:59

system is a system that was built by

7:01

men for men, because

7:03

the vast majority of people who are

7:06

committing crimes are men, and

7:08

for someone like me to be put

7:10

through the criminal justice system as a

7:12

defendant is highly unusual. Um,

7:15

I come from a middle class background, I come from an educated

7:17

background. I have no

7:20

history of you know, behavioral

7:22

problems or anything like that. Like I'm

7:24

usually what I mean, actually,

7:26

usually the victims of crimes also happened

7:28

to be young men of color. But

7:31

generally when you think of someone like me, the

7:34

media presents someone like me as

7:36

a crime victim, and

7:38

for me to be in a position of being

7:40

able to both sympathize

7:43

with what it is like to be a

7:45

young woman who is victimized by

7:47

a man, and to be able

7:49

to sympathize with the experience of young

7:52

men who are being put through this incredible,

7:54

the unfair criminal justice process

7:57

that puts me in a unique position to like build

7:59

bridge and I kind of view

8:02

my work as bridge

8:05

building as like acknowledging

8:07

the complex humanity of people on

8:09

both sides of the equation and

8:11

being able to bring

8:14

nuance back into the true crime genre,

8:16

which I tend to feel has

8:19

been more dominated

8:21

by scandalous, salacious,

8:23

black and white presentations of stories

8:26

as opposed to more complicated

8:28

ones. And a lot of times, like a

8:30

lot of people reach out to me thinking

8:33

that I am going to be

8:35

able to understand their humanity

8:38

in a way that other people just

8:40

don't refuse to and so

8:42

a lot of the stories that I end up talking

8:44

about are just people who have reached out to me. So

8:47

you're not somebody who people are coming to you and going I need

8:49

you to fix this for me. I mean, a lot of people

8:51

reach out to me asking me to fix things for them,

8:53

But the truth of the matter is, I'm not a lawyer,

8:56

So like a lot of the people who would love

8:58

for me to be able to do something about some one's

9:00

case, like I usually

9:02

end up being the person who like directs

9:04

them towards the Innocence project

9:07

that is like closest to their location.

9:10

What I end up doing is I

9:12

try to give a voice to the people

9:14

who have felt like their voice has been stolen from

9:16

them. And once again, it isn't necessarily

9:18

someone who's been wrongfully convicted. Did

9:21

you come out of this experience when you finally

9:23

were free, did you come

9:25

out of this with some divine ability

9:28

to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't.

9:31

No, I don't think anyone has that

9:34

ability. No, they don't, absolutely

9:36

not. I think that what it gave

9:38

me was a

9:41

perspective that I wouldn't have had otherwise,

9:44

but also a sensitivity to

9:47

when I view people as

9:50

being scapegoaded, whether they

9:52

did something or not. I

9:54

am very sensitive to when

9:57

people become ideas of people

9:59

and not actual people, and I

10:01

can see that happening on a day

10:03

to day basis. What was the most consistent

10:06

idea that you represented to people, Um

10:08

that Foxynoxie was a

10:11

drug adult, sexually promiscuous

10:15

young woman who manipulates

10:17

men to do her bidding. Like there's

10:19

this idea of I think there was also

10:21

this sense of like female jealousy

10:23

that was imbued in me. So basically everything

10:26

that is stereotypically bad

10:28

about being a woman was sort

10:31

of put on me. I

10:33

was made to be this like jealous,

10:35

sexually promiscuous, manipulative,

10:38

druggie woman, and

10:41

I came to embody that in the minds

10:43

of people. And on the other hand,

10:46

I also was, you know, portrayed

10:48

as this like saint like damsel

10:51

in distress, and even in the courtroom, people

10:53

were you know, presenting me as like, on

10:55

the one hand, she has the face of an angel,

10:57

on the other hand, she's really like

11:00

devil like. And it was like, how

11:02

about I'm neither. I'm

11:05

just a young person who, like

11:08

my my roommate was murdered and I had no

11:10

idea what was going on. And everyone was

11:12

speaking in Italian really fast, and I had

11:14

no idea what was going on, and I got

11:16

scared and here I am so

11:20

how much time did you spend in the Italian prison?

11:22

Total? Four years, So

11:25

from age twenty to twenty four,

11:28

I spent in a foreign prison,

11:30

and everybody in there with you was Italian. Actually,

11:33

the vast majority of the people who were in there

11:35

were either Nigerian

11:38

or um Roma. I

11:41

mean, there were plenty of Italians in there, and a lot

11:43

of them were very, very poor Italian

11:45

people who um had

11:47

ties to the drug trade and stuff like that.

11:50

A lot on a lot of people in for

11:52

drug offenses, whether they were drug mules

11:54

or drug dealers. Amanda

11:57

Knox, if you

11:59

like crime drama where the defendant

12:02

is falsely accused, that listened

12:04

to my conversation with filmmaker Joe

12:06

Burlinger. Burlinger directed

12:08

the Paradise Lost series of

12:10

documentaries about the trial of

12:12

the West Memphis three. I mean,

12:14

here you have allegedly a

12:17

crime by three teens

12:19

who are not professional killers,

12:22

who brought, according to the prosecutor,

12:24

three little boys out into the woods and slaughtered

12:26

them to death in this savage beating, and yet

12:28

there was no blood found at the crime scene. And

12:31

then you look at the confession, and the confession

12:33

is riddled with inconsistencies and problems

12:35

coaching and coaching, so within

12:37

months we knew that something was amiss. Here

12:41

more of my conversation with Joe Burlinger

12:44

at Here's the Thing dot org. After

12:47

the Break, Amanda Knox described

12:49

the toll that her long wait

12:51

for justice had on her family.

13:02

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's

13:04

the Thing. After her release

13:06

from prison, Amanda Knox wrote

13:09

a memoir titled Waiting to be Heard.

13:11

A few years later, Netflix

13:13

released a documentary called Simply

13:16

Amanda Knox. However, she's

13:18

resisted offers to participate in

13:20

a feature film based on her experience.

13:24

I actually very much pushed

13:26

back against that. I mean, there's kind

13:28

of a film that's sort of a narrative

13:31

version of it. It's not worth

13:33

watching. It's really bad. I Mean, what I

13:35

thought that the documentary did that

13:37

a film couldn't do was

13:40

it allowed everyone to sort of present

13:43

their own thoughts in perspective about

13:46

what happened. And it didn't

13:48

claim to be Like,

13:50

it didn't have a scene where

13:53

I either kill or don't kill Meredith

13:55

Kircher, Right, Like the problem with

13:57

having a film be about

14:00

is you're making some sort of you're taking some stance

14:02

about reality that is built

14:04

up of a lot of claims

14:07

of reality, but not necessarily

14:09

reality. And in a situation

14:12

where so much judgment is attached

14:14

to that, I found that that was inevitably

14:17

going to be flawed.

14:20

Whereas a documentary

14:22

that genuinely allows

14:24

everyone to portray what

14:27

they experienced and what they think

14:29

about what they experienced and the facts and

14:32

the facts as they know them, is going to

14:34

be closer to the

14:36

truth and also is going to present

14:39

the crux of this issue, which is

14:41

that people are making claims about reality

14:43

that they can't actually you know, like sustain

14:46

with evidence, what do we actually

14:49

know? I want to preserve

14:51

this sense of like, well,

14:53

you know, the person who actually committed this crime,

14:55

Rudy Giday, who no one ever

14:57

talks about, is not some

15:00

and who's forthcoming with what actually happened.

15:03

Um, we have the evidence of him at the crime

15:05

scene, of him interacting with Meredith's

15:07

body and leaving his fingerprints and footprints

15:09

and her blood. We know that. Do

15:12

we have a camera on the wall

15:14

where we see him doing it or we're

15:16

in his mind right?

15:20

And I imagine for you want to avoid

15:22

that where they're gonna leave it gray, whether

15:24

you really killed this girl or not. You

15:27

know, a feature film is always going to be like, well,

15:29

you know, yeah, that's a fear

15:31

I would have. Yeah. That's the unfortunate thing

15:34

about true crime in general

15:36

is there is this sort of temptation to

15:40

treat it fundamentally as an entertainment

15:42

product. And due to that,

15:44

like the thing that is most entertaining is

15:46

when people can walk away from the movie

15:48

and just argue about it. You know, like,

15:51

if I feel this way about the case, you feel

15:53

that boy about the case, and

15:56

you know, now we can argue about it because it's unclear

15:58

and I think, um, one of my big

16:01

frustrations with my own case was

16:04

that the prosecution, first

16:06

of all, but also just people in general, always

16:08

wanted to have this attitude of

16:11

well, the defense says this, and the prosecution

16:13

says that, and so you

16:15

know, there must be some sort of truth in

16:18

between. Amanda must be guilty

16:20

of something. We're not quite

16:22

sure what it is, but she must be guilty

16:24

of something. And that's actually like

16:27

one of the major reasons why I

16:29

was retried and reconvicted.

16:31

I don't know if you knew that, or maybe you've

16:34

followed that in the documentary,

16:36

but like in Italy, the double jeopardy laws

16:38

aren't the same, and so when the

16:40

sort of whole forensic case

16:42

against me came crashing down after

16:45

my acquittal, I was retried

16:47

again, but on behavioral

16:50

evidence. So basically the prosecution said,

16:52

sure, we can't actually place her at the crime

16:54

scene, but she just didn't act

16:56

like a person I was. Yeah,

16:59

it was just something in like, we can't be totally

17:01

wrong, so like something's got to be there. And

17:03

I was reconvicted on that, like

17:06

just on that sort of sense that there must

17:08

be something there. We don't

17:10

have the evidence yet, but we're gonna find it, trust

17:12

me. Yeah, like there's some you know, I

17:14

just got a vibe and they

17:16

bought that. And it wasn't until the Supreme Court.

17:19

Um, you know, I was on trial for eight years

17:22

and it wasn't until the court swooped in

17:24

and was like, where is the evidence. There's literally

17:26

no evidence. Explained to people who don't

17:28

know, what are the extradition arrangements

17:31

between Italy and the United States. Did they try to have you

17:33

extradited? Because when you were convicted again,

17:35

you didn't go back right. So

17:37

the way that it worked was that there

17:40

is an extradition treaty between the United States

17:42

and Italy. And so while

17:45

I was in trial there, I was in prison. And

17:47

then I was acquitted and I was

17:49

allowed to go home, but I was still

17:51

on trial, like they still

17:54

pursued a case against me, and I

17:56

was retried in absentia, so they

17:58

had a whole trial without me

18:00

in Italy while I was here living in the United States.

18:03

And while that was going on, I

18:05

had I was meeting with lawyers here to

18:08

see, like, depending on the outcome

18:10

of this new trial, do I

18:12

want to make a case to at least

18:15

potentially serve my sentence here in the

18:17

United States so it's less of a burden on

18:19

my family. So here I am like

18:22

trying to go to college and go to school,

18:24

but also making plans to potentially

18:27

turn myself into the cops in

18:29

case there's a bad outcome in in this case,

18:32

which there was, and

18:34

I'm trying to like plan to how

18:36

am I going to fight my case in court here in

18:38

the US, to just see if

18:40

I can try to serve a sentence here in the US as

18:43

opposed to being trucked all the way back

18:45

to Italy. Like that was my twenties.

18:48

That doesn't exist that you can't serve your time in the

18:50

US for a crime in Italy, can you. Well,

18:52

the US has discretion over

18:55

whether or not it actually will

18:57

fulfill that extradition treaty,

18:59

like it can always say, you know what,

19:02

I don't really care to extradite her.

19:04

She's going to stay here in the US. But because

19:06

we want to appease the Italian justice system,

19:09

we're gonna hold her here in the U. S

19:11

she'll serve her sentence. Really, I didn't know

19:13

that. You know, I went through a divorce

19:15

in California. What's been re

19:18

christen the parents Rights movement,

19:21

It was the father's rights movement. Women

19:23

were favorite so clearly in

19:25

courts about custody and so forth. And that's

19:28

slowly changing. But in a in an analysis

19:30

that different organizations I worked with did, California

19:33

was ranked at the bottom of men's rights.

19:36

I mean it was a really, really really

19:38

because and and that breaks down

19:40

to basically two you

19:42

know, the haves and the have nots. I

19:44

was in court, and if the guy that walks in the room

19:47

is a gardener and he's getting divorced

19:49

from his wife, the divorce proceedings are

19:51

over in fifteen or twenty minutes. There's

19:54

no money for lawyers to mine and

19:56

pump out of that situation.

19:59

If a famous whatever, actor,

20:02

writer, musician, doesn't matter, government

20:04

official, if somebody prominent who

20:06

was presumed to have the resources comes into

20:08

court, it's like this is a big business.

20:11

So they say to you, Alec Baldwin, your

20:13

daughter who back then she was five years old, She's

20:15

on the other side of this six ft concrete

20:18

wall. Here's a paper clip. Start

20:20

digging, and you're gonna start digging

20:23

because if you're a normal human being

20:25

who has a child, you want to be with that

20:27

child, you want to parent that child. I know many

20:29

people drop out and they give

20:32

up and they write it off and go I'm going to

20:34

go start another family because they're so abused

20:36

by that system. And so abused was I

20:38

by that that I wrote

20:40

a book? So I wasn't wrongfully

20:43

convicted of murder in an Italian courtroom.

20:46

But I was somebody who did everything

20:48

they asked me to do, and

20:50

they just kept punishing me because they

20:53

knew I was going to keep coming.

20:55

I'm wondering in your case, was there

20:57

just this driving need for

20:59

you to share with other people what

21:02

I went through and the lessons of that

21:04

and how you can avoid what I went through?

21:07

Was there some of that? Well, first of all, I

21:09

just want to say that I'm really sorry that

21:11

you went through that. Um

21:13

and and I was going to point out,

21:15

like, you know exactly what it's like to be made

21:18

to be the center of a morality play

21:20

that people feel like they can just you know,

21:22

keep taking and like profiting

21:25

from and profiting from and profiting from. And I'm

21:27

I'm sure the tabloids had

21:29

their cut of the pie too, Like

21:32

I get it, Like it's easy to be

21:34

made the villain of a story, especially

21:36

when you're on trial, especially when you're accused.

21:39

Yeah, like all of the sort of prejudices

21:41

and stereotypes that we associate

21:44

with people, but we don't say in polite company.

21:46

As soon as you're accused of something and

21:48

you're in court, like everyone feels

21:50

comfortable bringing those stereotypes and

21:52

prejudices to the table, Like it's

21:55

no, it's always now we're allowed

21:57

to say she's a whore right

21:59

now? When you went

22:02

to prison, what was the sentence

22:05

the first time I was convicted, I was sentenced to twenty

22:07

six years. And when I

22:09

was reconvicted and re sentenced. I was

22:11

sentenced to twenty eight and a half

22:13

years. But to your point

22:16

previously, I think that especially

22:18

when we're talking about someone like you being in

22:20

court for not, you

22:23

know, a murder, right, like,

22:25

this is a situation where it's

22:28

and I think it points to the fact that, like, this

22:30

issue is not just about wrongful

22:32

convictions. It's broader than that. It's

22:34

about judgment. It's about mob

22:37

mentality and mob

22:39

profit off of an individual human

22:41

being, and it's about the dehumanization

22:44

of individual human beings for profit.

22:47

That is something that has

22:49

repercussions, not just in wrongful convictions

22:51

cases where like the stakes

22:53

are highest because you know, the prosecuted

22:56

ultimate cancel culture, the ultimate

22:58

cancelation. You're going to go to prison for

23:00

twenty eight and a half years for a

23:02

crime you did not commit. Amanda

23:07

Knox, if you're enjoying

23:09

this conversation, don't keep it to yourself.

23:12

Tell the world and be sure to subscribe

23:14

to Here's the Thing on the I Heart

23:17

radio app, Apple podcasts,

23:19

or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:23

When we come back, Amanda talks

23:25

about returning to Italy for the first

23:27

time since her release. I'm

23:37

Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's

23:39

the thing. When Amanda

23:41

Knox was released after four

23:43

years in prison, she returned to

23:45

Seattle. It took time for her

23:47

to rebuild her life. Last

23:49

year, on February,

23:52

she married writer Christopher Robinson.

23:55

He's a novelist, he has to master's

23:57

degrees in poetry. He's um

24:00

but you know he's my partner.

24:04

Yeah, no, no, no, not at all. In fact, nothing

24:06

to do with that, and no, if anything,

24:08

I've sort of like dragged him into

24:11

this world and that he you

24:13

know, didn't really have that much of a perspective

24:15

on He was just like a philosophy poetry guy.

24:18

But we have a really great dynamic

24:20

because of that, because you know, he can

24:23

bring his sort of analytical

24:25

self. I bring my emotional, experiential

24:27

self, and then we put that together into

24:30

what we hope is a really

24:32

complex, nuanced, heartfelt,

24:34

you know journey that we put people on to

24:37

your experience with paparazzi

24:39

is something that you know, one of the things

24:41

that people would tell me when I came home was

24:44

they would say things like, I feel really bad for you

24:46

because it's not like you're a celebrity it's not

24:48

like you asked for it. Um,

24:50

you just get you know, people chasing

24:53

you down the street. Do they do that to you now

24:56

today? No, But when I first came

24:58

home, and for many many any months afterwards,

25:01

and actually the entire time, I was still

25:03

on trial, so like I was still in I

25:05

was in freedom for four years, but still on trial.

25:08

Like any time something happened with the case,

25:10

there would be people outside of my apartment building.

25:12

But that's subsided now. Yes, it's

25:14

all finished. Now the Supreme Court

25:16

in Italy definitively acquitted

25:19

me. So

25:21

it's over. Like it's over in the sense that

25:23

I was definitively acquitted. It's

25:25

not over in the sense that, like my entire

25:28

life and identity is now

25:30

associated with a crime that I didn't

25:32

commit, that is still an

25:34

ongoing reality. Do you feel that way?

25:36

Do you go places and

25:38

do you I mean not now? Maybe

25:40

it's died down and where you live as

25:43

it's home, and maybe you fitted and people are

25:45

much more you know, kind of polite

25:47

toward you if you will. But I mean I'll

25:49

walk into restaurants and you just see that look in people's

25:52

eyes. Someone's eating with a crowd of people

25:54

they smack the person next to them,

25:57

they look at you, they look at them, they talk, everyone huddles

25:59

up. They then all of them look at you at

26:01

the same time. Five heads go snap. Then

26:04

they will come back into the hole and start laughing. And

26:07

you are this fodder

26:09

for them in this kind of gossipy, tabloordy

26:11

way. Well again, you're an idea of a

26:13

person, right like they've they've had you

26:15

as an idea of a person in their mind this

26:18

whole time. And the way that I feel

26:20

when I'm moving through the world is that

26:22

I have this sort of doppelgang or version

26:25

of me that sort of stands

26:27

in front of me, and everywhere

26:29

I go, I see people seeing

26:31

her, and I have no idea

26:33

what they're actually seeing because what the vision

26:36

of me that they're actually seeing was

26:38

constructed out of probably

26:41

just a lot of media, but what media

26:43

and who and like, you know, what

26:45

are the things that they are projecting onto

26:48

the name and face

26:50

Amanda Knox or Foxy Knoxie. You

26:53

know, there's a sense of sort of entitlement

26:55

because we are not,

26:57

like I don't think our brains are even

26:59

really well adapted to understand

27:03

that a human being that we've

27:05

seen but never encountered

27:08

is a real human being. Like back

27:10

in you know, hunter gatherer days, if you ever

27:12

heard of a human being who

27:15

you had never actually met before in your real

27:17

life, they were a god. Like

27:19

that's that's the only person that

27:21

you would ever have heard of that you never encountered

27:24

on your day to day life. And the king

27:26

would be a god. And so this like idea

27:28

of a person is actually something that

27:31

is very difficult for

27:33

people to like genuinely

27:35

understand. So I don't know if that's you know, something

27:38

that can help you process or

27:40

you know, console yourself or find peace.

27:43

Is like we actually, generally our brains

27:45

are really really bad at understanding

27:47

that a human being that we've heard of

27:49

but never encountered before is

27:51

a human being like I am. I

27:54

always tell people the worst thing

27:56

in life is to be misunderstood.

27:58

Like I'll sit there and say, kind of only people really knew

28:01

who I was. I just don't feel they think people

28:03

you know what we do, and you know my wife

28:05

and I what we do philanthropically

28:07

and all those silly things that you wind up having to

28:10

resist the desire to point your

28:12

finger that underlined that when I do this and

28:14

here's another thing. You know, I'm a human

28:16

being. Look, there are multiple sides of

28:19

me. But that's the trap that

28:21

you lunge in that way and you start to

28:24

advertise, and you start to respond

28:26

and say to people, well, I'm really this great guy, and

28:28

you don't get me, you get deeper in the quicksand

28:31

unfortunately when you do that. But my point

28:33

is is that in your case, you're

28:35

wrongfully convicted. But there

28:37

are people who do these crimes.

28:40

Someone killed Meredith Kircher.

28:42

His name is Rudy good Day.

28:45

He was actually recently released

28:47

from prison. He was I

28:49

mean, without getting into any ugly details, can

28:51

you share with us just one

28:54

moment of when you really, really when

28:56

you were in prison and you just kit rock bottom

28:58

and you thought what am I

29:00

going to do? What was that feeling

29:03

like for you as a person who didn't

29:05

belong there. Yeah, there

29:07

are a number of moments that come to mind.

29:10

Unfortunately, So first

29:12

of all, I should describe what was

29:14

the default setting. The default

29:16

setting for me in prison

29:19

was I had like I had been the sort

29:21

of like cheerful, just like having

29:23

a good life kind of person. And my

29:26

new emotional default setting

29:28

was reset two

29:30

sad so I

29:32

woke up sad. I lived through the

29:35

day sad, I went to bed sad,

29:37

and that was just like my new emotional

29:39

default setting. And I

29:41

just sort of like lived that and

29:44

I became numb to it, even

29:46

like I was just sad and

29:48

that was just normal, not an amazing

29:50

answer. But on top of that, like there

29:52

were moments where, you know, depending

29:54

on the various places

29:56

that we were in the case, Like very shortly after

29:59

I was convicted, two years into my imprisonment,

30:02

because it took that long for the trial to go do

30:05

its whole thing, my dad came

30:07

in um to visitation and

30:10

he had just had like a conversation

30:13

with the lawyers about potentially how

30:15

long it was going to take for the appeals process,

30:17

and you know, he had to share with me,

30:20

Um, you know, maybe it's going to be you

30:22

know, another several years. It could be five

30:24

years, it could be ten years. We're not quite sure.

30:27

UM. And I

30:30

at that moment, you

30:33

know, during my visitations, I would

30:35

very very I tried very very hard

30:37

to be cheerful and to like have just like this

30:39

positive moment with my family members because those

30:41

moments were precious, right. I didn't want to upset

30:44

my dad. I'm here, wrongfully

30:46

convicted of murder, facing

30:48

a twenty six year sentence in an Italian

30:50

prison. But you know, I really really don't want

30:52

to upset dad. I don't want to upset Dad

30:54

because it's like we only have so we

30:56

only have six hours a month that we get

30:58

to see each other. So like this

31:00

is my one hour with my dad, and

31:03

I just couldn't hold it together and

31:06

I started sobbing. And

31:08

then I did the thing that is like the worst thing

31:10

that I did in prison, which is that I

31:12

begged my dad to save me, even

31:15

though I knew that he was doing everything

31:17

he could already and there was nothing

31:20

more that he could do. So you were saying

31:22

to him, you got to get me out of here. I was

31:24

like, please save me? And what did he say?

31:28

I mean, he couldn't say anything. He just

31:30

started he started

31:33

crying, and it was the first time

31:35

I'd ever seen my father cry. It.

31:38

Um, it really really solidified

31:40

for me how bad

31:43

the situation was, because I

31:45

had never seen my dad cry before in my entire

31:48

life. Is that the point where you started to consider,

31:50

at least that you weren't going to get out of there? Absolutely?

31:54

Um, and you know, that was the period

31:56

of time where I was writing

31:59

in my journe Arnold's, trying to imagine

32:02

what a worthwhile life would

32:04

look like if it took another five

32:06

years, or another ten years, or another twenty

32:09

years, or if I got out as an old woman,

32:11

Like what was I going

32:13

to do to make my life

32:15

worth living? Um? So

32:17

that was the kind of things that I was

32:19

thinking about as a two year old. And

32:22

when did the sun come out again and you started

32:24

to have hope that you were going to get out of the labyrinth.

32:28

Well, like I said, I

32:30

was afraid to hope all the way leading

32:32

up to my acquittal. You were prepared for it to go the

32:34

wrong way. I was prepared for it to go the wrong

32:36

way. And the moment I was acquitted, I

32:39

lost it. In fact, I lost it so

32:41

hard that people who were escorting

32:44

me thought, like the police thought

32:46

that I had misunderstood the verdict.

32:48

They were like trying to tell me, no, you got acquit it, and

32:50

I was like, I know. And

32:54

I that was the moment of

32:56

like, oh my god, it's over.

32:59

And the great irony of that is that it wasn't

33:01

over. And I entered

33:03

into a whole new version

33:05

of this labyrinth where I thought I had got out,

33:07

and yet here's this yet another four years

33:10

of labyrinth ahead of me. And like

33:12

the sort of true moment of feeling

33:15

like I'm no longer being hunted anymore was

33:17

after I was definitively acquitted

33:19

by the Italian Supreme Court. Throughout

33:21

my entire trial, when everything was just getting worse

33:24

and worse and worse, I kept believing

33:26

that, like it was inevitable that I was going to

33:28

be found innocent, because I was like, there's

33:30

just some horrible misunderstanding

33:32

and eventually the truth is going

33:35

to come out. The jury is going to see through all this

33:37

bullshit that the prosecution is saying, and

33:39

I'm going to be released. So I was convinced

33:42

the day that I was convicted that I was going to be

33:44

acquitted. And then once

33:46

that happened and the world turned

33:48

upside down and everything I thought

33:50

was true about reality was

33:52

turned upside down. I no

33:55

matter how good it was getting

33:57

throughout my acquittal, my appeals

33:59

trial leading up to my acquittal, I

34:01

was afraid to hope because

34:04

I couldn't allow myself to be crushed

34:06

again. And so even when there

34:08

was like big news that like, you know, the independent

34:11

experts are calling bullshit and all the prosecution's

34:13

forensic evidence. I was afraid

34:16

to hope to buy into it because

34:18

I knew that like I was innocent the

34:20

first time, like what stopped them from

34:23

a quitting me, you know, last time, So

34:25

like for me, those are

34:27

the hard moments. The sort

34:29

of true moment of feeling like I'm

34:32

no longer being hunted anymore was after

34:34

I was definitively acquitted by the

34:36

Italian Supreme Court. And honestly,

34:39

one of my first true experiences

34:41

um was actually when I first met Chris. I

34:44

was doing arts correspondence for a local newspaper.

34:46

He wrote his debut novel. I reviewed

34:49

it for the paper, I asked for an interview.

34:51

I interviewed him and his co author

34:54

m They were two best friends who wrote a novel together. And

34:58

I had this great experience interviewing and we

35:00

drank Scotch, we watched Star Trek, We wandered around

35:02

the neighborhood into the night, and at the end

35:04

of like hanging out with these

35:07

two guys who I had never met before, Gavin,

35:10

his best friend and co author, gave me this big

35:12

bear hug and Chris shook my hand and

35:14

said we should be friends, and

35:16

I was like, oh my god, I

35:19

can just make friends

35:21

with people again, Like I can

35:23

just like meet people and

35:26

make friends now, Like I

35:28

don't have to hide anymore.

35:31

I have a normal life, right and

35:33

like, you know, my life is not normal.

35:35

But I was restored

35:38

that that feeling that

35:40

like I'm no longer being hunted. I no longer

35:43

have to fear people that I don't know in

35:45

the same way anymore. Another

35:47

thing that occurs to me about this is to have

35:49

Civics classes taught to teach people

35:52

about what are the things we need to do,

35:54

one of which is jury participation, in

35:56

jury selection. To use your

35:58

story as a kind of of a template here.

36:01

Let's say that girl, let's say she slept with everybody

36:03

in the Perugia phone directory.

36:06

That doesn't make her a murderer, doesn't

36:08

make your murderer. Yeah, I could have been a professional

36:11

dominatrix and it shouldn't have mattered

36:13

because the evidence wasn't there. I mean, that's

36:16

what bothers me. Yeah, I I actually think Civics

36:18

would be really really good to teach in schools.

36:20

And part of that civics course

36:22

would be not just your civic responsibilities,

36:25

but also your rights. So

36:28

I didn't know what my rights were

36:30

going into the interrogation room. I didn't know

36:32

how to recognize that I was being interrogated

36:35

as a suspect. They certainly didn't tell

36:37

me that. They certainly refused

36:39

me a lawyer, So

36:42

you know, like, so there are a million ways

36:44

that we are set up to

36:46

be ignorant in the face

36:49

of these bigger societal

36:51

structures that have enormous

36:54

power over our individual lives.

36:57

And I think that it's an atrocity

36:59

that we aren't more empowered with

37:01

the knowledge of how we

37:03

have power over those structures and also

37:06

how those structures have power over us. I'm

37:08

always filled with jokey versions of this, but I

37:10

have this feeling like, you get out of prison, you

37:13

do the four plus years in prison, and you could

37:15

have been in prison for decades, and you get out, how

37:18

is your relationship with your parents now? Because

37:20

it was like my joke version as you call your mom and go,

37:22

Mom, I really miss you. Can

37:24

we go have lunch and she's like, I'm sorry, baby, I have

37:26

tennis tomorrow. Where

37:28

are you at with your parents now? I

37:30

mean, we've always been super super close.

37:33

Um. Can I talk about a joke though that

37:35

I really appreciated that? Um,

37:37

First of all, I loved you on thirty Rock, and

37:40

one of the first nice jokes

37:42

about me was on thirty

37:45

Rock that I encountered. Good God,

37:47

maybe there's some nice jokes out there, but most of the time

37:49

I found when I first came out, that people

37:51

were making jokes at my expense.

37:54

And the first time that I

37:56

heard a joke that was not at my expense

37:59

was Kristen Shall on thirty Rock

38:01

saying it's not hard to be famous

38:04

a man an ox is famous for not killing

38:06

someone, And that was

38:08

like, oh, you

38:11

can make a joke and not at my expense,

38:13

Thank you, Thank you, Kristen. Show. But

38:15

things are good with your family, absolutely,

38:18

and they appreciate you and

38:21

hold you close because you could be over there

38:23

right now, in an alternate universe.

38:25

You could be over there now just really really struggling.

38:28

Absolutely, And their lives all came

38:30

to a stop when everything happened

38:32

to me. So it's not like my life was sort

38:34

of trapped in a hole and there's went on. Like

38:36

everyone in my family, their whole lives

38:39

just came to a stop and This was

38:41

especially difficult on my younger sisters. I

38:43

have three younger sisters, and one

38:45

of them was eight years old at the time has happened,

38:47

another was thirteen, one was just going into college.

38:50

Their lives stopped, like everything

38:52

the all my entire family came became

38:55

about saving Amanda. Save Amanda.

38:58

And it was until I was able

39:00

to come home that we've all been able to

39:03

restart our lives. And

39:05

of course we all live within walking distance of each

39:07

other, and that's it's always been that way.

39:09

Have you been back to Italy? I have been

39:12

back to Italy. So I was invited

39:14

by the Italy Innocence Project,

39:16

which did not exist while I was in

39:18

prison, to come and speak

39:21

at their first ever annual

39:23

conference about trial

39:25

by Media. And

39:28

I felt that, like, of

39:30

all the ways to return to Italy,

39:33

that was the best way possible.

39:35

Like, you know, I had struggled with the idea of like

39:37

how am I going to go back and see

39:39

the people who supported me and thank them

39:42

and like to try to do that process. And

39:45

I returned and um,

39:48

the press called it, you know, Amanda's familiar

39:50

dance with the with the paparazzi,

39:53

and it's like, actually I'm being assaulted by

39:55

them, like I can't move because

39:57

they're throwing themselves at me

39:59

and my partner. The country that originated

40:02

the word paparazzi, by the way, yep, Yeah,

40:05

that was a crazy experience. I had many

40:07

many good moments. Were you scared

40:09

to go there? Were you terrified to go there? I was

40:11

absolutely scared to go there. You're

40:14

braver than I would never go back there again

40:16

ever. Well, Like the crazy thing

40:18

is, these things happen everywhere, right,

40:20

Like, it's not like there's anywhere

40:22

where you're safe from being judged,

40:26

you know, like misunderstood and

40:28

misjudged and mistreated. You're in as much

40:30

danger here as you are in Perugia. Yeah.

40:32

The one difference being that like here in the US,

40:35

there's more of a nuanced sentiment

40:38

towards me, whereas in Italy there's

40:41

more of a She's the O. J. Simpson

40:43

of Italy kind of thing. And

40:46

I was surprised. Like the big surprise

40:48

that I had was when I

40:50

gave my speech. I was fully prepared to

40:52

get arrested again, like to

40:55

like get shanked, get booed, like

40:58

all of that. You say, shanked a

41:01

prison term, you just put a chill in my back to

41:03

get shanked. What

41:06

a reveal that was. You really did

41:08

do four years in prison? Yeah,

41:11

ship. I was surprised when

41:13

people gave me a standing applause

41:16

for my talk um and

41:18

granted, these are the kind of people who are going to show

41:20

up, who are interested in criminal justice issues,

41:22

who are interested in the Italy Innocence

41:24

Project, who are going to show up anyway, so they

41:27

I was a more accommodating audience, but

41:29

I was not. I was not ready

41:31

for it. Like I I remember

41:34

like being whisked away because I had have personal

41:36

security while I was there, Like it was, it was

41:38

not an easy process, and this like personal

41:40

security guard sort of whisked me away

41:42

down the stairs, down the hallway

41:44

in underground where I had this like secret

41:46

sort of underground dungeon bunker

41:48

thing where I sort of lived throughout the entire

41:51

conference. And as

41:53

soon as we got down the stairs, he gave

41:55

me a little squeeze and said and

41:59

I just started bawling. And it

42:01

was a really great moment where I was like, Wow,

42:04

maybe I'll be given a chance,

42:06

not even a second chance, like a chance.

42:09

In Italy, journalist,

42:13

public speaker and podcaster

42:16

Amanda Knox. I'm Alec

42:18

Baldwin and this is here's the thing.

42:21

We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie

42:24

donohue and Zach McNeice. Our

42:26

engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks

42:29

for listening. What

43:01

makes a B time