Amanda Knox broke down in tears during an Italian television interview this week and insisted that she had “nothing to hide” following her failed bid to overturn her slander conviction.
Knox, 36, became choked up as she told Sky TG24 that she had been “unjustly accused for 17 years… my entire adult life.”
“From the beginning I just wanted to do the right thing and tell the truth,” she added, telling the channel that she is a “victim” with “nothing to hide.”
“Sometimes I think there’s nothing I can do but I’ll try forever,” she explained of her crusade to clear her name.
Knox also became audibly emotional when discussing the verdict on her podcast, “Labyrinths.”
“I’ve been here before — I’ve been in front of a judge and a jury, and I’ve poured my heart out to them before, hoping that I would be heard, and I’ve been torn down before,” she lamented, adding that she was “confused” by the outcome of what she was thought would be a “very straightforward” proceeding.
“I, in no way, knowingly and willingly accused an innocent man. I was psychologically tortured by the police,” Knox added.
Amanda Knox was studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, when she was accused of fatally stabbing her roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, in November 2007.
The Seattle native, then 20, and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested and later convicted for the vicious crime.
Shortly after her initial arrest, Knox also falsely accused her boss, bar owner Patrick Lumumba, of stabbing Kercher 47 times.
Knox spent four years in Italian prison before her guilty verdict was overturned, followed by years of legal back-and-forth before the country’s highest court definitively exonerated her and Sollecito in 2015.
Lumumba spent two weeks in custody and was questioned, but was ultimately discounted as a suspect.
Last fall, Italy’s highest court also tossed the slander conviction pertaining to Knox’s accusation against Lumumba after finding that the young student’s rights were violated when she was questioned for hours without a lawyer or translator present.
“The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, an officer slapped me three times saying ‘Remember, remember’,” she told the court on Wednesday, saying that police wanted her to pin the blame Lumumba.
Knox retracted her statement against Lumumba a few hours after she made it, writing in a note that “I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion.”
The court ultimately reinstated the conviction on Wednesday – though Know’s three-year prison sentence was credited to time served.
On her podcast, Knox – who is now married and a mother of two – said she carries the trauma of the last 17 years with her to this day.
“I was 20 years old when this happened, and I’ve just been living with this open wound and with this incredible stigma that comes from being accused of this crime, and all of the implications that follow, and I’m still living with it,” she explained.
“And I can live with it; I will survive this, and I’m gonna keep fighting it. But it’s hard.”
