Amanda Knox is reflecting on her freedom today and "grieving" her 20-year-old self after being convicted of murder while studying abroad in Italy as a college student.
"I've had to learn to grieve for my 20-year-old self because, in a way, she did not survive her study abroad experience, like there was a girl who never had anything bad happen to her, who went there with an open heart and an open mind and then got thrown into this insane experience," Knox, 37, said in a live interview Wednesday on "Good Morning America" about her new memoir "Free: My Search for Meaning."
"I wished that me at 37 could be there to say, like, 'Amanda, it's not your fault, and you're gonna be OK. You are," Knox continued. "And everything that you're grieving that's being stolen from you right now, you're actually so lucky because you're going to get it back and you're going to be better and stronger for it."
In 2007, Knox's British roommate and fellow student Meredith Kercher was sexually assaulted and murdered while the two were studying abroad in Perugia. Knox's ensuing case drew international headlines, catapulting her and Raffaele Sollecito, another student she was dating, to notoriety.
Knox and Sollecito were convicted of murder in 2009, but their convictions were overturned on appeal in 2011, the same year Knox was released from prison. Italy’s highest court subsequently ordered a new trial in 2013, and the two were reconvicted of murder in 2014 before the high court overturned both murder convictions in 2015.
Knox served a total of nearly four years in prison in Italy prior to her acquittal in 2015.
"I've always been claustrophobic so when I found myself trapped in a prison cell, I was obviously, very triggered," Knox said of her experience in prison.
"When I would look at that barred door, that solid steel door that I could not open -- there wasn't even a handle -- I would go into a panic attack," she continued. "But then a small shift to the window, where I could see a bell tower in the distance or if I looked closely, I see bunnies frolicking in the grass, that made it possible for me to center myself, to ground myself, and it's really a beautiful metaphor, again, for how do we frame our existence? How do we frame our perspective? How do we see the world clearly so that we can be effective agents in our own lives?"
Authorities in Italy also charged and convicted another man Rudy Guede in a separate case for the murder of Kercher in 2008. Guede was released from prison in Italy in 2021 after serving 13 years.
Last year, Knox was convicted again in Italy for slander, for a statement she made naming Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner and her former employer in Italy, in the days following Kercher's murder. Although Knox was sentenced to three years, she was not expected to serve additional time beyond the four years she spent in prison previously.
Knox long maintained that she was convicted of a crime she never committed.
"A lot of people ask me, 'Why don't I, like, move on from this experience?'" Knox said. "First of all, I remain wrongly convicted and I am attempting to overturn this wrongful conviction that was based on a retraction of the statements that I was forced into signing. So it's really a Kafkaesque, gaslighting nightmare that I'm continuing to live."
Today, Knox is a podcast host, co-hosting "Labyrinths with Amanda Knox" with her husband and partner Christopher Robinson. She is also a mother of two -- a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old -- and she said she's starting to talk to her children about her experience in Italy.
"[My daughter] Eureka ... she's 3 years old already and asking questions. She wants to know the story of when mommy went to Italy. And I believe in being transparent," said Knox. "I believe in being honest. I don't think that there should be any taboos in conversation between me and my kids, so I always give her very age-appropriate, honest answers. And I've told her the story of when mommy went to Italy, how someone hurt her friend, and then they hurt mommy by putting her in prison and all of that."
"But I think the bigger thing that I want to convey to my kids is not something that I can say, it's the way that I can be," she added. "When I got pregnant with my daughter, I felt an incredible sense of urgency to be OK so that I wouldn't unconsciously pass on my own trauma and my own baggage onto her and so I took the steps that I talk about in my book to address head-on my trauma and I feel like now, I can show her that what it means to go through the inevitable pains of life but still be in a place of being OK."
Knox's personal search for freedom is the focus of her new memoir, "Free: My Search for Meaning," out Wednesday from Grand Central Publishing.
"I think the message and the big takeaway of my book is that all of these external things are happening to us all the time, not just to me," said Knox of her new book. "I happen to have a very big, strange and overwhelming experience, but ultimately, we all sometimes feel trapped and like we're not the protagonist, we don't have a say in our own stories, in our own lives. And I think that it's a shift in perspective that took me a long time to develop, that really made me realize that whatever people say about me out in the world doesn't define who I am. I am not boxed in by their narratives. I can stand up on that box and tell my own story."
This is the second memoir from Knox, who previously released "Waiting to Be Heard," published by HarperCollins in 2013.
"Free" is being released in hardcover, e-book and audiobook editions.
