Amanda Knox keeps having to state her innocence, says Jessica Bennett in The New York Times. In 2009, when Knox was 22, she was found guilty of having murdered her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, two years previously. “Foxy Knoxy”, as the press nicknamed her, became a tabloid sensation as soon as the case went public, mostly because she was young, beautiful and strange. She constantly denied any involvement and her conviction was overturned in 2011. Knox returned to the US, having spent four years in prison, only to be reconvicted in absentia three years later. In 2015 she was declared unequivocally innocent by Italy’s highest court – but even now, people are convinced she did it.
It’s hard to get a job when everyone thinks you’re a murderer, Knox tells Bennett. In 2013 she received a reported $3.8m to write a memoir – which sounds like a lot, but years of covering legal fees had left her family broke. Once she’d paid them off, Knox had only $200,000 left. Now she’s in a bind – the only work she can get is talking about her case. “I want to get to a place where I don’t have to keep living the worst experience of my life so that we can pay the mortgage.”
Knox, her husband, Christopher Robinson, and their baby daughter, Eureka Muse, live in a woodland cabin near Seattle, where their doormat reads: “Come back with a warrant.” They’re an unconventional pair: their wedding last year had a time-travel theme; they attend medieval fairs in costume; and they forage for mushrooms in their garden. “In an alternate life,” says Robinson, “we’d be sci-fi event planners.” Knox has other ideas: “I keep telling myself if all else fails, I can make cuckoo clocks for a living.”