Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #071 Jason Flom with Amanda Knox

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#071 Jason Flom with Amanda Knox · Wrongful Conviction

0:01
Speaker 1: My Interview with Amanda Knox originally aired on February sixth
0:06
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen. It's sort of almost like the anchor
0:08
Speaker 1: episode of the second season. Now Amanda is engaged to
0:13
Speaker 1: be married and I couldn't be happier. They're just an
0:16
Speaker 1: amazing couple, she and Chris Robinson. And she's now the
0:20
Speaker 1: host of the Scarlet Letter Reports on Broadly Weise, in
0:24
Speaker 1: which she sits down with famous women to discuss the
0:27
Speaker 1: deeply personal journey of being sexualized, scrutinized, and demonized by
0:32
Speaker 1: the media, and how they've rebuilt their lives after their
0:35
Speaker 1: most personal details have been made public thereby the name
0:38
Speaker 1: of Scarlet Letter Reports. Amanda is also the host of
0:41
Speaker 1: The Truth About True Crime, a Sundance AMC podcast series.
0:46
Speaker 1: Amanda's like my little sister, and I'm so happy for
0:49
Speaker 1: all the great things that are happening for her. Please
0:52
Speaker 1: listen through to the end because she drops some pearls
0:56
Speaker 1: of wisdom at the end of this episode that really
0:59
Speaker 1: will affect you as they affected me in a very
1:02
Speaker 1: profound way.
1:11
Speaker 2: I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had a beautiful life.
1:16
Speaker 3: I went to sleep because September seventh was the first
1:19
Speaker 3: day of my high school year. I was going to
1:21
Speaker 3: be a senior at twenty two, I was set to
1:23
Speaker 3: start college.
1:24
Speaker 1: I woke up and my life was never the same again.
1:28
Speaker 3: Cops came out with guns drawn, and I never saw
1:31
Speaker 3: freedom ever since after that. It's like roach mode, Tom,
1:35
Speaker 3: once you get in and I can't.
1:37
Speaker 1: Mouth this is wrongful conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back
1:52
Speaker 1: to wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today's guest is Amanda Knox.
1:57
Speaker 4: I had like this year plan of studying language and
1:59
Speaker 4: study poetry in mind.
2:01
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox was wrongfully convicted of a crime that happened
2:05
Speaker 1: in Italy in two thousand and seven.
2:07
Speaker 3: Manda Knox verdict has just been read. Guilty here guilty.
2:12
Speaker 5: Just hours ago, twenty two year old college student Amanda
2:15
Speaker 5: Knox finally learned her fate. After eleven hours of deliberations.
2:20
Speaker 5: The verdict was read by the presiding judge. Amanda and
2:25
Speaker 5: Raphael A guilty of the murder of twenty one year
2:28
Speaker 5: old Meredith Kircher. Her name is Amanda Knox, known for
2:31
Speaker 5: the notorious murder of her British roommate Meritage.
2:34
Speaker 1: She served four years in prison and went through numerous trials.
2:39
Speaker 4: And I thought for months, months of imprisonment that it
2:43
Speaker 4: was just a big misunderstanding and everything would get worked
2:46
Speaker 4: out because the evidence would come back and it would
2:48
Speaker 4: prove that.
2:49
Speaker 3: I was innocent.
2:50
Speaker 1: Before she was fully exonerated with DNA evidence in twenty fifteen, Amanda,
2:56
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
2:57
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
2:58
Speaker 1: So let's go back in time as we do on
3:01
Speaker 1: the show. What possessed you to become an exchange student?
3:05
Speaker 1: Like it's sort of a it's a brave thing as
3:07
Speaker 1: a young woman, oh Man.
3:10
Speaker 4: For me, that it wasn't that brave because my family
3:15
Speaker 4: came from Germany, and so I was always aware that
3:18
Speaker 4: there were other worlds out there where other people were
3:22
Speaker 4: living lives with other cultures and other languages, and I
3:26
Speaker 4: was familiar with that. I had a knack for languages,
3:29
Speaker 4: so I was also aware of that. In school, I
3:32
Speaker 4: was interested in what other people were doing outside of
3:37
Speaker 4: my little sphere of knowledge. And I mean I spent
3:41
Speaker 4: two weeks when I was fourteen in Japan because I
3:44
Speaker 4: studied Japanese in high school. I went with my family
3:48
Speaker 4: to Germany when I was fourteen as well, So it
3:52
Speaker 4: wasn't my first time outside of the country, and it
3:54
Speaker 4: definitely wasn't unusual for me, Like my family had been
3:58
Speaker 4: talking about a foreign exchange per since I was in
4:01
Speaker 4: high school, Like my oma really wanted me to do
4:03
Speaker 4: some high school in Germany.
4:05
Speaker 6: Well, you did like an access tour at the age
4:07
Speaker 6: of fourteen.
4:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, now that I'm meant think about it, Yeah, it's.
4:10
Speaker 6: A coincidence, but it is funny looking back on it.
4:13
Speaker 1: So you were somebody who was a world traveler at
4:16
Speaker 1: a very young age, and so yes, and that makes sense.
4:18
Speaker 6: And how did you settle on Italy?
4:20
Speaker 4: Well, I was studying Italian and I was studying German,
4:23
Speaker 4: both of them.
4:24
Speaker 3: In college.
4:26
Speaker 4: I wanted to be a linguist, a translator, an interpreter,
4:29
Speaker 4: whatever I could be that had to do with languages,
4:31
Speaker 4: because I couldn't explain a creative writing degree to my dad.
4:36
Speaker 4: I couldn't justify it, but I could justify being a
4:39
Speaker 4: translator and a linguist. And I liked Italian because I
4:45
Speaker 4: studied Latin in middle school and it was just weird enough,
4:52
Speaker 4: it was poetic, and in the meantime there was a
4:56
Speaker 4: poetry program going on. There's this exchange with the University
5:01
Speaker 4: of Washington where I was studying with poetry and I
5:05
Speaker 4: that was located in Rome, and so I thought, Okay,
5:08
Speaker 4: this is this brilliant opportunity. I'll go study Italian in
5:12
Speaker 4: Perusia for nine months and then spend the summer in
5:15
Speaker 4: Rome studying poetry.
5:17
Speaker 3: And that was the plan.
5:19
Speaker 4: I had, like this year plan of studying language and
5:22
Speaker 4: studying poetry in mind.
5:23
Speaker 1: How long were you there before everything started to unravel?
5:28
Speaker 1: How long at the time of the just over a month, right, so,
5:32
Speaker 1: and things were really looking up, right, you had just
5:35
Speaker 1: fallen in well, I don't know if you could call
5:37
Speaker 1: it love or poppy love or whatever it was, but
5:39
Speaker 1: you had a romance going on.
5:41
Speaker 6: Yeah.
5:41
Speaker 3: Well, I was in classes.
5:44
Speaker 4: I was in this city full of young people who
5:46
Speaker 4: were from all over the world. I made a friend
5:49
Speaker 4: there who was from kazakhs Dan and I had never
5:52
Speaker 4: encountered a person from kazakhs Dan before. And she would
5:54
Speaker 4: come over after class and we would play guitar together.
5:58
Speaker 4: So that was just really cool. Or I went to
6:00
Speaker 4: this one dinner with other people who were in my class,
6:04
Speaker 4: and there was this chef from Japan who was studying
6:09
Speaker 4: Italian cooking. There in Rome and PERUZI was kind of
6:12
Speaker 4: traveling around learning how to cook, and he made a
6:15
Speaker 4: big dinner and I helped make taram Sue. It was
6:18
Speaker 4: just it was really cool that to be around so
6:21
Speaker 4: many curious young people, and to be living with curious
6:26
Speaker 4: young people. Meredith was one of those. She wasn't in
6:28
Speaker 4: the same school.
6:30
Speaker 6: That I was.
6:30
Speaker 4: She was studying at the University of Perusia, and I
6:34
Speaker 4: was studying at the University of Prestranierti, so the university
6:38
Speaker 4: for foreigners, because my Italian wasn't good enough yet to
6:41
Speaker 4: actually go to the regular university.
6:43
Speaker 1: Wow, that was just the way you said that words
6:45
Speaker 1: or transported me from Yeah right, yeah, let's how did
6:49
Speaker 1: you end up? You and Meredith end up finding each
6:51
Speaker 1: other in order to cohabitate.
6:54
Speaker 3: Well, both of us found separately the house that we ended.
6:57
Speaker 6: Up living in, so just an ad in the paper.
7:00
Speaker 3: Not even in the paper.
7:01
Speaker 4: I was wandering around by the university to Perstagnietti, and
7:06
Speaker 4: there was a woman, a young woman there. I guess
7:10
Speaker 4: she was younger than I am now crazy. She seemed
7:13
Speaker 4: so old and mature when I was twenty, and she
7:16
Speaker 4: was putting up a notice like one of those you rip.
7:19
Speaker 3: The bottom off for a phone number.
7:22
Speaker 4: And she said that she was and she could speak English,
7:25
Speaker 4: and she said that she was advertising for this house
7:27
Speaker 4: that was literally right down the street from the university
7:30
Speaker 4: that I was going to go to. And I said, oh,
7:33
Speaker 4: my gosh, can I come see it. I was there
7:35
Speaker 4: with my sister to come visit the city really quickly
7:37
Speaker 4: before I actually moved there. So I visited the house
7:41
Speaker 4: before Meredith had ever arrived in Perushia, and already made
7:47
Speaker 4: like a pact with Philomena and Laura, who were the
7:52
Speaker 4: two Italian young women who were living there, to move
7:55
Speaker 4: in as soon as I came back. And then by
7:57
Speaker 4: the time I moved back to the house, Meredith had
8:00
Speaker 4: already moved in. She had also found a notice somehow
8:04
Speaker 4: the same same.
8:05
Speaker 1: Way, seriously old school, like the little piece of paper
8:08
Speaker 1: ripping off the thing like that.
8:10
Speaker 6: You didn't find it on Craigslist exactly.
8:12
Speaker 4: No, no, no, I wouldn't even know what that looked
8:15
Speaker 4: like in Perusia.
8:15
Speaker 1: Right, So you end up living with these three other
8:19
Speaker 1: young women and things are looking great, right, I mean,
8:24
Speaker 1: what a life you have ahead of you and what
8:27
Speaker 1: a place to be.
8:28
Speaker 3: Oh definitely, I was like.
8:32
Speaker 4: The one thing I can say that disappointed me was
8:35
Speaker 4: I was expecting the work, the school work, to be
8:40
Speaker 4: a little bit more rigorous than it was. It was
8:43
Speaker 4: very relaxed, easy compared to what I was used to,
8:47
Speaker 4: and I had expected I was going to be learning
8:50
Speaker 4: the language more quickly.
8:52
Speaker 1: I'm expecting that enrollment's going to go up after your
8:54
Speaker 1: description among some slackers in the United States.
8:57
Speaker 6: But that's beside the plate. So fast forward and you are.
9:01
Speaker 1: Now you meet this young man and you start this
9:06
Speaker 1: little romance. Yes, it's so charming how it's depicted in
9:10
Speaker 1: the movie.
9:11
Speaker 3: He's so charming. He is. He is.
9:13
Speaker 4: He's like a charming in a boyish way. He's he's
9:20
Speaker 4: not intimidating in any ways. He's very sweet and considerate,
9:27
Speaker 4: but also kind of just like a puppy, just you know.
9:31
Speaker 3: Just bumbling along.
9:32
Speaker 4: And it's not like we ever had any deep conversations.
9:35
Speaker 4: But then again, we also didn't really speak each other's
9:39
Speaker 4: language very well.
9:40
Speaker 3: So it was very It was very sweet.
9:42
Speaker 4: It was like holding hands and walking along and him
9:45
Speaker 4: being like, oh, Italian ladies have perfume. You should have perfume,
9:48
Speaker 4: and oh, let me show you this cool market that
9:51
Speaker 4: I've I've discovered here in Tody and you know, stuff
9:54
Speaker 4: like that. It was really it was just like so
9:58
Speaker 4: stereotypical of like the kind kind of romance that you
10:01
Speaker 4: find yourself in when you're really young and you're in
10:03
Speaker 4: another country and you come across this really cool, nice,
10:08
Speaker 4: sweet different person that who's coming from a completely different
10:13
Speaker 4: culture than you.
10:14
Speaker 1: It sounds like a high school relationship in college. Yeah,
10:17
Speaker 1: I got it, but really really cute. So then things
10:21
Speaker 1: go completely haywire. And that's one of the things that
10:25
Speaker 1: was I found so powerful in the movie is that
10:28
Speaker 1: there's this juxtaposition right of like you're going along, you're
10:33
Speaker 1: just having this sweet, wonderful, new, foreign, beautiful experience, and
10:40
Speaker 1: then one day you show up, well you showed up
10:43
Speaker 1: at your your home, and things got a little weird.
10:47
Speaker 1: I mean, so it sort of unravels like a horror
10:49
Speaker 1: movie actually, right.
10:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially in the sense that, like in the horror movie,
10:54
Speaker 4: you don't realize what's going on as you're walking through it,
10:58
Speaker 4: even as like the little things add up ominously, right,
11:03
Speaker 4: Like that was my experience being plunked into a crime scene. Basically,
11:11
Speaker 4: I had spent the night over at Raphael's like I
11:13
Speaker 4: was doing a lot that one week that we were together,
11:17
Speaker 4: and I came home in the morning and to take
11:22
Speaker 4: a shower. And I came home and the front door
11:27
Speaker 4: was wide open, which was odd because to even close
11:33
Speaker 4: the door you had to lock it. And that was
11:36
Speaker 4: the habit that Meredith, Laura, and Phila Maina and I
11:39
Speaker 4: were in. We we opened the door with our key
11:43
Speaker 4: and when we closed it, we locked it to keep
11:45
Speaker 4: the door closed because otherwise it would just kind of open.
11:49
Speaker 3: So the door was wide open and nobody was around.
11:53
Speaker 3: I didn't see anyone. I kind of peeked.
11:55
Speaker 4: I went inside and I called out, and I go
11:58
Speaker 4: in to take a shower. And when I go in,
12:00
Speaker 4: I call out, like Laura, Philha Mana, Meredith, anyone home?
12:04
Speaker 3: And no one was home.
12:06
Speaker 4: And I thought that was odd, but nothing seemed wrong,
12:11
Speaker 4: Like the main room that I was walking into was
12:15
Speaker 4: perfectly normal. Philamna's bedroom door was closed. I went into
12:21
Speaker 4: my bedroom and undressed, went to the shower, and that's
12:27
Speaker 4: when I noticed spots of blood in the bathroom. But
12:32
Speaker 4: they weren't a lot. It was just eerie enough to
12:38
Speaker 4: be like that's weird. On top of the door being opened.
12:42
Speaker 4: But what was going on in my mind was, Oh,
12:44
Speaker 4: maybe someone like cut themselves and then like ran out
12:49
Speaker 4: to go get a bandage, or maybe someone I mean,
12:53
Speaker 4: it could also have been in my like it could
12:56
Speaker 4: also have been like, you know, when you brush your
12:58
Speaker 4: teeth and if you haven't floss in a while, you'll
13:00
Speaker 4: like bleed from your mouth when you're like, you know,
13:03
Speaker 4: it wasn't a lot. It wasn't like so much that
13:07
Speaker 4: I thought something was.
13:08
Speaker 6: It was in the sink, though it was in the sink, right,
13:10
Speaker 6: so it could have been anything.
13:12
Speaker 4: It could have been anything, And I didn't immediately jump
13:15
Speaker 4: to the conclusion that somebody had been devastatingly hurt or
13:19
Speaker 4: something bad had happened.
13:20
Speaker 3: I just thought it was weird.
13:22
Speaker 4: And so I took my shower, and I stepped out
13:24
Speaker 4: of the shower and onto the bath mat, and I
13:27
Speaker 4: noticed that there was a larger splotch of blood on
13:29
Speaker 4: the bath mat, and I thought, Okay, that's more suspicious,
13:34
Speaker 4: but I still didn't know what to make of it.
13:36
Speaker 4: I went into my room, I got dressed. I went
13:38
Speaker 4: and blue dry my hair in the other bathroom that
13:42
Speaker 4: we had, because that's where the hair dryer was, and
13:44
Speaker 4: when I was in there, I noticed that the toilet.
13:47
Speaker 3: Hadn't been flushed. There was feces in the toilet.
13:50
Speaker 4: And that, on top of everything else, just struck me
13:55
Speaker 4: like something like I got the creepy feeling that someone
13:58
Speaker 4: is that was in the house with me who shouldn't
14:00
Speaker 4: be there, because Laura and Philamena were really were clean
14:06
Speaker 4: freaks and they wouldn't forget to flush the toilet, and
14:09
Speaker 4: like that on top of everything else, Like maybe even
14:12
Speaker 4: if it was just that and everything else was normal,
14:14
Speaker 4: the door was closed, I wouldn't have thought creepy feeling,
14:18
Speaker 4: but that, on top of everything else, gave me a
14:21
Speaker 4: creepy feeling, And so I immediately booked it back to Raphael's.
14:25
Speaker 3: And I wasn't sure.
14:27
Speaker 4: What to tell him, like that some weird things were
14:32
Speaker 4: at my house, but what could he say? But I
14:35
Speaker 4: ended up talking to him and he said, oh, you
14:37
Speaker 4: should call your roommates and see what's going on. Maybe
14:39
Speaker 4: something happened with them. And I called Laura and she
14:45
Speaker 4: was I don't remember if she picked up or not,
14:48
Speaker 4: but she was not even in the city. She was
14:50
Speaker 4: away in Rome. Philamina picked up and she had been
14:53
Speaker 4: at her boyfriend's and Meredith did not pick up her phone,
14:57
Speaker 4: just rang and rang, and I tried both of her
15:01
Speaker 4: phone numbers. She had an Italian phone number and a
15:03
Speaker 4: British phone number, and it didn't answer. So I told
15:08
Speaker 4: like mayan, Raphael's plan had been to just go, you know,
15:12
Speaker 4: away for the weekend, but I wanted him to come
15:15
Speaker 4: take a look at what was going on in my
15:17
Speaker 4: house with me because I needed to figure out what
15:19
Speaker 4: was going on. Philamina said she was going to come home.
15:22
Speaker 4: We were all going to take a look at it,
15:23
Speaker 4: see what was going on. She thought that maybe there
15:26
Speaker 4: had been a break in, and so I went considering
15:30
Speaker 4: that the door was open, right, And so I went
15:33
Speaker 4: back with Raphael and we took a more scrutinous look
15:36
Speaker 4: at the house. We opened up Philamina's bedroom and Philamena's
15:41
Speaker 4: bedroom was the one that had been broken into.
15:43
Speaker 3: There was her.
15:45
Speaker 4: Window was broken, There was glass all over the floor,
15:49
Speaker 4: and there was you know, it was it was a
15:52
Speaker 4: bit of a mess, like there was a jumble of clothing.
15:55
Speaker 4: I didn't see if there was anything like I looked
16:01
Speaker 4: to see if there was anything stolen of value, because
16:04
Speaker 4: if it was a break in, you'd think that there'd
16:06
Speaker 4: be something stolen, but her camera was there, her computer
16:09
Speaker 4: was there, like our stereo was still in the house,
16:13
Speaker 4: the TV was still in the house.
16:15
Speaker 3: I went to my bedroom, my computer was there, and.
16:18
Speaker 4: So I thought, what the heck happened, like, what did
16:22
Speaker 4: this person steal if they broke in? And then by
16:25
Speaker 4: that time, you know, Raphael and I sort of moved
16:29
Speaker 4: around the house some more noticed that Laura's room was
16:32
Speaker 4: totally fine, untouched, pristine, and Meredith's room was locked, which
16:38
Speaker 4: was unusual because the only time that I had ever
16:42
Speaker 4: encountered her door being locked was either she was out
16:45
Speaker 4: of town or she had just gotten out of the
16:48
Speaker 4: shower and like closed the door and locked it before
16:51
Speaker 4: she got changed and then came out again. And I
16:58
Speaker 4: asked Rafael to try to break it down because I
17:03
Speaker 4: knocked on the door and Meredith didn't answer. I knocked
17:06
Speaker 4: louder and Meredith didn't answer, and the fact that she
17:08
Speaker 4: wasn't answering her phone, like, I was worried maybe something happened.
17:12
Speaker 4: So I asked Raphael to try to break down this door,
17:15
Speaker 4: and he kicked at it, and he kicked at it,
17:18
Speaker 4: but he couldn't kick it down. So we called the cops.
17:20
Speaker 4: In the meantime, phil A Mana came home. She was
17:23
Speaker 4: freaking out hysterically. An Italian police showed up with this
17:29
Speaker 4: this phone that belonged to Meredith and they said that
17:34
Speaker 4: they had found this phone in a garden that was
17:39
Speaker 4: a little bit like down the road. And yeah, so
17:45
Speaker 4: her phone is in the middle of some yard.
17:48
Speaker 3: Down the road. We can't find her. Her door is locked, there's.
17:51
Speaker 4: Like crazy things going on in the house. And so
17:54
Speaker 4: finally phil Amna says to the cops, like kicked down
17:58
Speaker 4: their door. And Philamine is there with her boyfriend and
18:02
Speaker 4: their two friends because they were off doing things together,
18:04
Speaker 4: and so they all came there and the police said, well,
18:07
Speaker 4: we don't have the authority to kick indoors, like we're
18:09
Speaker 4: only you know, we're not criminal. People were just we're
18:13
Speaker 4: just here to like for these phone issues. They weren't
18:15
Speaker 4: even like criminal investigator cops, right, They were just regular
18:19
Speaker 4: Joshmo on the block cops who were like trying to
18:22
Speaker 4: figure out whose lost phone this was.
18:24
Speaker 6: Why were they even looking for it, That's the strange
18:26
Speaker 6: part of this.
18:26
Speaker 3: Why were they looking for her phone? Because it was ringing.
18:30
Speaker 4: I had been calling it and it was ringing and
18:32
Speaker 4: the person whose yard it was found in heard the
18:36
Speaker 4: ringing and discovered the like, found the phone in the yard,
18:41
Speaker 4: and then called the cops saying, Hey, there's this phone
18:45
Speaker 4: in my yard. Can you find out who this belongs to?
18:49
Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty weird though, that they show up
18:51
Speaker 1: with the phone and then they don't try or okay.
18:53
Speaker 4: So now so well, and indeed, like what's interesting is
18:57
Speaker 4: they showed up. And I thought they had showed up
18:59
Speaker 4: because me and Raphael had called them and was said like, hey,
19:04
Speaker 4: there's this break in in our house. But they apparently yeah,
19:08
Speaker 4: but these cops weren't coming for that.
19:09
Speaker 3: They had no idea what we were talking about.
19:11
Speaker 4: The reason they came was because of the phone, and
19:14
Speaker 4: they knew that the phone was connected to the house
19:16
Speaker 4: because it was Meredith's phone and Meredith was convoluted. Meredith
19:23
Speaker 4: was using a SIM card that belonged to Philimena, and
19:25
Speaker 4: Philimena's name.
19:26
Speaker 3: Was registered with the house, so.
19:28
Speaker 4: They had discovered the SIM card and traced it back
19:31
Speaker 4: to the house. So they showed up for entirely different reasons.
19:34
Speaker 4: And I had assumed they showed up because of a
19:36
Speaker 4: break in. So these two just lay cops show up
19:40
Speaker 4: with this phone, and I'm assuming that they're there because
19:43
Speaker 4: of the break in, but in fact they are not.
19:45
Speaker 4: So they say, well, we don't have the authority to
19:47
Speaker 4: kick down this door. And Philamnasa's bullshit kick down this door.
19:51
Speaker 4: So she and her friends kicked down this door with
19:55
Speaker 4: the cops. That's Meredith's bedroom door, and I mean Philamina
20:01
Speaker 4: screamed and the police yelled out out out everyone get
20:06
Speaker 4: out of the house, and there was this big just
20:09
Speaker 4: shuffle and everyone, like I had no idea what was
20:12
Speaker 4: going on. I was pushed out of the house bedroom. No, no,
20:16
Speaker 4: I was you just know that pandemonium breaking and everyone's
20:20
Speaker 4: screaming in Italian, and so I'm trying to like keep
20:22
Speaker 4: track of everything, and I'm asking Raphael to like tell
20:26
Speaker 4: me what everyone's saying, because you know, it's one thing
20:28
Speaker 4: to have someone speak to you slowly and calmly in
20:31
Speaker 4: Italian and another one to have them just like screaming
20:34
Speaker 4: hysterically out loud at everyone's talking over each other. And
20:37
Speaker 4: so Raphael was like slowly sort of just trying to
20:40
Speaker 4: translate for me what was going on.
20:42
Speaker 3: I was pushed out of the.
20:43
Speaker 4: House and and by then then some more cops arrived.
20:51
Speaker 4: I think the the the phone police guys called in
20:55
Speaker 4: for backup. And I mean, I don't even know who
21:00
Speaker 4: who all these people were that were showing up to
21:02
Speaker 4: my house. All I knew was that suddenly I didn't
21:06
Speaker 4: have a house anymore. I wasn't allowed to go inside,
21:08
Speaker 4: and I was just standing outside thinking what did they
21:13
Speaker 4: see in Meredith's room?
21:14
Speaker 3: Like did they see her? Did they see someone else?
21:17
Speaker 4: Like, and you know, you can think, Okay, maybe maybe
21:21
Speaker 4: I should have known it that it was obviously going
21:24
Speaker 4: to be Meredith in there, but like by the way
21:26
Speaker 4: that Philamina was screaming, like she was just saying a foot,
21:29
Speaker 4: a foot, a foot in Pierre and Pierre and Pierre,
21:32
Speaker 4: and I thought that maybe there was like a severed
21:34
Speaker 4: foot in there. Like I had no idea what was
21:36
Speaker 4: going on. And then like I kept overhearing little spits
21:40
Speaker 4: and pieces, something that had to do with the wardrobe,
21:43
Speaker 4: something that had to do with the blanket of her bed.
21:47
Speaker 4: And eventually what I pieced and what Raphael was able
21:51
Speaker 4: to really piece together for me was that Philamena, her boyfriend,
21:56
Speaker 4: and her friends and this one cop had kicked down
21:59
Speaker 4: the door and seen the crime scene, which was Meredith's
22:06
Speaker 4: body was lying on the ground covered in a blanket
22:10
Speaker 4: and her foot was sticking out from beneath the blanket.
22:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there was blood everywhere.
22:15
Speaker 4: I mean there was blood on the walls, there was
22:17
Speaker 4: blood all over the floor, there was blood on the wardrobe.
22:21
Speaker 4: So there was and like it wasn't just like there
22:24
Speaker 4: was like splatters of blood and there was like fingerprints
22:26
Speaker 4: in blood. It was just this terrible, horrific crime scene
22:30
Speaker 4: that showed absolutely struggle and and uh so I'm really
22:50
Speaker 4: grateful that I never had to see that in person.
22:54
Speaker 4: The first time I ever did see that was pictures
22:58
Speaker 4: that my lawyer showed me to prepare me for court
23:03
Speaker 4: when we were going to have to sit there and
23:05
Speaker 4: go through all the pictures of the crime scene and
23:09
Speaker 4: the pictures of the autopsy.
23:12
Speaker 1: Right, and let's and let's let's go to that, but
23:14
Speaker 1: make a stop on the way at the time of
23:17
Speaker 1: the arrest, because it's odd. I mean, you there were
23:23
Speaker 1: other people who could have been targeted. There were some
23:28
Speaker 1: very obvious signs, right, there was a known burglar in
23:31
Speaker 1: the neighborhood.
23:33
Speaker 6: Had the cops.
23:34
Speaker 1: Been maybe let's let's give them the benefit of the
23:37
Speaker 1: doubt and say, had they've been more experienced, But let's
23:40
Speaker 1: face it, it's really a question of competency.
23:43
Speaker 3: They're also trigger happy.
23:44
Speaker 4: I think there was a lot of like automatically there
23:47
Speaker 4: were so okay, So what did they have in front
23:52
Speaker 4: of them? When let's let's put ourselves in the shoes
23:55
Speaker 4: of the police officers as they come to this place.
23:58
Speaker 4: They have.
24:00
Speaker 3: They have.
24:02
Speaker 4: A hysterical roommate, a roommate who doesn't really understand what's
24:06
Speaker 4: going on and is talking to her boyfriend all the
24:08
Speaker 4: time in English. They have a body out of nowhere.
24:13
Speaker 4: They have some phones that were found a little bit away.
24:17
Speaker 4: It's a gruesome crime scene. It looks like a break in,
24:20
Speaker 4: and and what they had, you know, in the in
24:24
Speaker 4: the hours following was just all of us standing around
24:27
Speaker 4: outside waiting to hear what happened, and then bringing us
24:32
Speaker 4: to the police office to ask us and question us. Basically,
24:38
Speaker 4: what they had to go on was there's this horrible thing,
24:41
Speaker 4: and all we have are people to look at.
24:43
Speaker 3: Because they sure they weren't analyzing the crime scene.
24:49
Speaker 4: They had you know, people in their their suits going
24:53
Speaker 4: in and out checking out everything. But like at that
24:57
Speaker 4: point they were playing the detail actives in terms of like, Okay,
25:01
Speaker 4: let's try to solve this in forty eight hours type
25:04
Speaker 4: of thing where you just study the characters of the
25:07
Speaker 4: people who are around you, and something about me striked
25:13
Speaker 4: them as odd. They thought that my emotions didn't match
25:18
Speaker 4: up to what they should have been. Either I cried
25:21
Speaker 4: too much or I cried too little. I said the
25:25
Speaker 4: wrong thing, I was doing the wrong thing. They thought
25:30
Speaker 4: that I was weird. I was being you know, cuddled
25:33
Speaker 4: by my boyfriend who was trying to comfort me. All
25:38
Speaker 4: of it they just felt was inappropriate, and that made
25:41
Speaker 4: me suspicious. We're better equipped to make, you know, decisions
25:45
Speaker 4: about guilt and innocence, but we are also just flawed
25:49
Speaker 4: human beings who should remember that when we're drawing conclusions
25:53
Speaker 4: about people, and we shouldn't rely so heavily on initial
25:58
Speaker 4: impressions because those don't actually tell us any relevant information.
26:02
Speaker 1: So in the meantime they come along and eventually and
26:07
Speaker 1: it doesn't take that long, right, And we see this
26:09
Speaker 1: again and again where you have a small community, a
26:12
Speaker 1: very high profile crime, and a lot of pressure on
26:16
Speaker 1: the police to solve it, and then in your case,
26:19
Speaker 1: there was the added pressure of the press gets a
26:22
Speaker 1: hold of this and things get really crazy. Yeah, in
26:26
Speaker 1: a way that the world hadn't seen.
26:27
Speaker 3: For the press in both America and Italy, it wasn't
26:30
Speaker 3: just the story of the year, it was the story
26:33
Speaker 3: of the century.
26:35
Speaker 4: And then they have to suddenly like rise to the occasion,
26:38
Speaker 4: which is this one that they're not experienced and they're
26:41
Speaker 4: not equipped to do. You know, it was kind of
26:44
Speaker 4: like when you look back at them going through the
26:47
Speaker 4: crime scene and like looking through everything, it looks a
26:50
Speaker 4: little bit like kids who are playing pretend. They're pretending
26:54
Speaker 4: to be forensic experts, moving through a space and like
26:57
Speaker 4: gathering evidence, but you know, trying to like swi a
27:00
Speaker 4: splotch of blood, but like swabbing the whole sink to
27:03
Speaker 4: get that splotch of blood, or like passing around evidence
27:07
Speaker 4: like you know, candy. It's like they were.
27:12
Speaker 3: Kids pretending to be doing their job. And I mean,
27:20
Speaker 3: I know that one of.
27:21
Speaker 4: The issues with the criminal justice system is like of
27:23
Speaker 4: resources and lack of training, and it would be nice
27:27
Speaker 4: if when faced with those situations, when you know that
27:33
Speaker 4: you can't rise to the occasion in the way that
27:35
Speaker 4: you would, you need to you at the very least
27:39
Speaker 4: admit it or ask for help do something. In this case,
27:44
Speaker 4: the Prusia police were wanting to prove themselves to the
27:48
Speaker 4: world because suddenly the world was looking at them, and
27:50
Speaker 4: they were very proud, and they were Prusia being a
27:57
Speaker 4: city that supported itself on tourism, they couldn't afford to
28:03
Speaker 4: have some foreign exchange student be murdered without Perusia being
28:09
Speaker 4: able to rise to the occasion and answer the call
28:12
Speaker 4: of duty. And they just weren't able to do that.
28:16
Speaker 4: They were faking it, trying to make it, and they
28:17
Speaker 4: couldn't make it.
28:19
Speaker 1: You know, an improper forensics is sadly tragically common. It's
28:25
Speaker 1: the second leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States.
28:27
Speaker 1: So I don't want to make this sound like this
28:29
Speaker 1: was an Italian problem. This is a worldwide problem. And
28:32
Speaker 1: part of it is the training. As you just said,
28:34
Speaker 1: I mean, we need better standards for training our forensic
28:37
Speaker 1: analysts and experts, and anyone who saw it making a.
28:40
Speaker 6: Murderer saw that as well.
28:42
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really we want to believe that these
28:45
Speaker 1: people are scientists with fantastic backgrounds, and we'd like to
28:50
Speaker 1: believe that they're perfect.
28:51
Speaker 3: And they have principles and standards.
28:52
Speaker 6: That would be good too.
28:53
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of very good forensic scientists
28:55
Speaker 1: out there, but the bad ones are capable of inflicting
28:58
Speaker 1: incredible amounts of damage. We've seen some who are really
29:01
Speaker 1: bad actors who do it over and over again until
29:03
Speaker 1: they're eventually caught, and then all these cases have to
29:05
Speaker 1: be unraveled the taxpayer expense, and of course the human
29:07
Speaker 1: tragedy is that so many people get wrongfully convicted as
29:09
Speaker 1: a result. You were one of them, although over there,
29:12
Speaker 1: but I do want to highlight the fact that it
29:14
Speaker 1: happens in America with alarming frequency. So you get arrested
29:19
Speaker 1: and thrust into this world you have no understanding of
29:23
Speaker 1: right in so many ways, including the language barrier and
29:26
Speaker 1: everything else. And now what happens, like what's going through
29:31
Speaker 1: your mind? And how did it get to trial?
29:33
Speaker 4: And then besides the whole issue of the course of
29:37
Speaker 4: interrogation that authors a false confession, speeding past that, because
29:42
Speaker 4: I've talked about that often, finding myself in a prison
29:45
Speaker 4: environment was incredibly surreal and confusing. I had been given
29:52
Speaker 4: the impression initially that I was there for my own protection,
29:56
Speaker 4: so they, the police told me that I was going
29:59
Speaker 4: to the prison because that was the safe place for me.
30:03
Speaker 4: I thought I was a witness to the case, and
30:07
Speaker 4: I had no idea what was happening to me. I
30:10
Speaker 4: didn't realize that I had been accused of her murder,
30:14
Speaker 4: you know, And it sounds so dumb, Like it sounds dumb,
30:16
Speaker 4: like I had handcuffs on me and they put me
30:18
Speaker 4: in prison. How could I not realize what was going on?
30:21
Speaker 3: But like, the idea that.
30:22
Speaker 4: I would be accused of a murder I didn't commit
30:25
Speaker 4: was so foreign to me that I was making every
30:29
Speaker 4: excuse in my mind to explain what was happening to
30:34
Speaker 4: me that wasn't exactly what was happening to me, which
30:37
Speaker 4: was the most absurd thing that I could possibly imagine, Like,
30:42
Speaker 4: it wasn't it wasn't in my radar to be wrongfully
30:46
Speaker 4: convicted of something that I didn't do, especially something so
30:49
Speaker 4: brutal and terrible as the murder of my roommate Like this,
30:54
Speaker 4: I was blaming myself for like seeming confusing to people.
31:00
Speaker 4: I was under the impression that I was a witness,
31:03
Speaker 4: and then when it was finally brought to my attention
31:05
Speaker 4: that I was actually accused of murder.
31:09
Speaker 3: I thought that there was this big mistake.
31:10
Speaker 4: I asked, I asked to be interrogated again, because I
31:14
Speaker 4: was like, no, you misunderstood me.
31:16
Speaker 3: It was my fault. I'm sorry.
31:18
Speaker 4: Like I was so young and naive and idealistic and
31:26
Speaker 4: idealistic and manipulable, like I thought that I was on
31:30
Speaker 4: the side of the police and there was just this
31:31
Speaker 4: big misunderstanding. And I thought, for months, months of imprisonment,
31:37
Speaker 4: that it was just a big misunderstanding and everything would
31:39
Speaker 4: get worked out because the evidence would come back and
31:42
Speaker 4: it would prove that I was innocent. And like, I
31:44
Speaker 4: spent eight months like that, and I spent eight months
31:54
Speaker 4: hoping I was just I was going to.
31:56
Speaker 3: Go home, and and that didn't happen, and it took them.
32:01
Speaker 4: Eight months to formally charge me, and with you know,
32:05
Speaker 4: so I the way that they do it in Italy is
32:08
Speaker 4: they can arrest you and then they can continue their
32:09
Speaker 4: investigation to actually come up with charges against you and
32:13
Speaker 4: without bail.
32:14
Speaker 3: And I'm held without bail.
32:15
Speaker 4: Yes, So I was in prison for eight months without
32:18
Speaker 4: formal charges and then finally those were laid down on me.
32:23
Speaker 3: And of course, I what's crazy is that, you know,
32:28
Speaker 3: as everything kept getting worse and worse and worse.
32:32
Speaker 4: I kept hoping, like my hopes kept rising, that things
32:36
Speaker 4: would finally turn out in the end, because it couldn't
32:39
Speaker 4: keep getting this bad. It couldn't like it was just impossible.
32:42
Speaker 4: It didn't make sense why this would be happening to me.
32:45
Speaker 4: And I kept thinking that it's it's gonna figure itself
32:50
Speaker 4: out in the end, even if it's not figuring itself
32:53
Speaker 4: out now, even if it's taking months and the police
32:55
Speaker 4: just don't get it, Like a jury of my reasonable
32:59
Speaker 4: peers are going to see how ridiculous this is and
33:02
Speaker 4: they're going to put a stop to it. And the
33:05
Speaker 4: closer we get to my conviction, the more I thought
33:09
Speaker 4: I was going to go home. And you know, it took.
33:13
Speaker 4: I was in prison for two years prior to my conviction,
33:16
Speaker 4: and then I was convicted, and that changed everything.
33:20
Speaker 3: That was when.
33:22
Speaker 4: I I finally had to face my reality with full
33:31
Speaker 4: awareness of what had happened and what was going to
33:37
Speaker 4: happen to me, and I was My mom didn't like
33:42
Speaker 4: the way that I started writing letters. She thought that
33:46
Speaker 4: I was depressed, and you know, it.
33:50
Speaker 3: Could be that is true.
33:54
Speaker 4: It is true that after a while, especially post my conviction,
34:00
Speaker 4: the world was just.
34:02
Speaker 3: Sad because you know that life isn't fair.
34:08
Speaker 4: Everyone tells you that, but you never think that you're
34:12
Speaker 4: going to be that person with that unfair story, that
34:18
Speaker 4: you're the you're that one person. And you know, I'm
34:23
Speaker 4: not the only person in history who's ever had this
34:25
Speaker 4: happen to them, Like there have been horrible things throughout
34:28
Speaker 4: history that human beings have done to one another, and
34:30
Speaker 4: you just you never think that you're going to be
34:33
Speaker 4: that witch who's going to be burned or you know.
34:37
Speaker 5: The.
34:39
Speaker 6: Or sure.
34:41
Speaker 1: I mean, I think everybody can relate to that, because
34:44
Speaker 1: you know, and people have varying degrees. Everyone's had some
34:48
Speaker 1: experience where they were like, wait, why me, but yours
34:50
Speaker 1: just happens to be very extreme. And then they had
34:54
Speaker 1: a number of inconvenient issues, right, I mean, they forget
34:59
Speaker 1: for a second the fact that they were overlooking the
35:02
Speaker 1: obvious suspect. Who was this guy who who they knew
35:06
Speaker 1: had been burglarizing and this was a burglary homes in
35:09
Speaker 1: the neighborhood.
35:10
Speaker 6: Ultimately, of course, he was convicted, and right.
35:13
Speaker 4: Well, that's the frustrating thing about my case, and that
35:18
Speaker 4: I think is a repetition of things that happened in
35:20
Speaker 4: wrongful convictions cases where a prosecution gets invested in a
35:26
Speaker 4: theory and they're so invested in that theory that they're
35:29
Speaker 4: willing to fudge, distort, and completely ignore truthful elements in
35:36
Speaker 4: order to sustain that theory. So in my case, the
35:39
Speaker 4: prosecutor was so invested and the police were so invested
35:43
Speaker 4: in my guilt that they let off the person who
35:48
Speaker 4: actually did it, whose blood, whose DNA was everywhere inside
35:53
Speaker 4: merit It's body, inside her purse, all over the crime scene,
35:56
Speaker 4: his fingerprints in her blood, all over the crime scene.
36:00
Speaker 4: They let him off as not guilty of the murderer.
36:03
Speaker 4: They have him guilty of raping her, and they didn't
36:08
Speaker 4: find him. That's why he got a lower sentence, is
36:11
Speaker 4: because it was more worth it to them to let him,
36:14
Speaker 4: the actual murderer, off, you know, on a lesser charge,
36:18
Speaker 4: so that they could sustain their theory of me. And
36:21
Speaker 4: in addition to that, to sustain that theory, they had
36:24
Speaker 4: to ignore. Like we were talking about forensic evidence and
36:26
Speaker 4: how yes, in my case there was bad forensic evidence
36:30
Speaker 4: because you know, there was contamination. That was the issue
36:33
Speaker 4: with the bra clasp. There was this knife where like
36:36
Speaker 4: they said, there was Meredith dianana it, but there wasn't
36:40
Speaker 4: in the end. But even more than that, like that,
36:43
Speaker 4: I understand that people are sort of fascinated by those
36:45
Speaker 4: elements because you know, maybe they're you know, smoking gun elements.
36:49
Speaker 4: But really, like the smoking gun element in this case
36:53
Speaker 4: is one that the police completely ignored, which is whose
36:56
Speaker 4: DNA was in the crime scene.
37:00
Speaker 3: Merediths and Rudy Gadets, the actual killer. That's it.
37:08
Speaker 1: It's impossible for a reasonable person, even if you don't
37:13
Speaker 1: have a background in investigations or anything else, right to
37:19
Speaker 1: rationalize the fact that your DNA wasn't there.
37:24
Speaker 4: Well, they came up with all the excuses like, oh,
37:28
Speaker 4: she was able to clean it up, which is laughable.
37:31
Speaker 3: Which is laughable. It's impossible.
37:33
Speaker 4: You can't just look around this room that we are
37:36
Speaker 4: in right now and I'm like, okay, well your DNA's
37:38
Speaker 4: right there, so I'm going to leave that and my
37:40
Speaker 4: DNA's right there. Like DNA is invisible, it's you can't
37:44
Speaker 4: identify like oh that you know, sweat stain is from
37:47
Speaker 4: me versus this sweat stain is from you.
37:49
Speaker 3: You can't do that. It is physically impossible also to.
37:53
Speaker 4: Even like move around a crime scene without leaving traces
37:56
Speaker 4: of yourself unless you're in a in one of those suits.
38:00
Speaker 4: But even that, yeah, but even that, like, it's no guarantee.
38:03
Speaker 4: You have to be very if you The reason why
38:08
Speaker 4: forensic experts have to move around in a crime scene
38:10
Speaker 4: in those suits is because it's so easy to contaminate
38:13
Speaker 4: a crime scene, and the prosecution because they were so
38:18
Speaker 4: invested in the idea of my guilt, they were so
38:20
Speaker 4: invested in it that they just had to believe that
38:23
Speaker 4: it was possible for me to have done this, to
38:26
Speaker 4: have cleaned up all trace of me connecting me to
38:29
Speaker 4: the crime.
38:30
Speaker 1: Right, which would be even if you had endless amounts
38:33
Speaker 1: of time resources, the most sophisticated equipment, which of course
38:39
Speaker 1: and magic coggles, and you would still have to have. Also,
38:43
Speaker 1: you'd have to be some combination of a fairy and
38:45
Speaker 1: an alien in order to float in there, yes, avoid
38:48
Speaker 1: leaving any traces, clean it up without leaving any traces
38:51
Speaker 1: as well.
38:51
Speaker 6: Right, So you would have had to.
38:52
Speaker 1: Either commit the murder in a hazmat suit and have
38:57
Speaker 1: and I've sort of been floating above, and or come
39:01
Speaker 1: back with your team of experts from some laboratory who
39:07
Speaker 1: would have been able to you know, mad you.
39:10
Speaker 6: Know, scrubbed party.
39:14
Speaker 4: And also without leaving traces of cleaning, because of course
39:18
Speaker 4: you can't leave traces of having cleaned.
39:22
Speaker 2: So where's the yeah, no, she did it by God
39:30
Speaker 2: in there, like yeah.
39:33
Speaker 4: I mean we can laugh about it right now, but
39:35
Speaker 4: like that was legit, and like that happens all the time,
39:39
Speaker 4: the kinds of ways that bad investigators contort their minds
39:45
Speaker 4: in order to shape it around an idea instead of
39:49
Speaker 4: allowing the context of the situation of relevant information to
39:53
Speaker 4: inform them that that is a devastating factor in wrongful convictions,
40:01
Speaker 4: and it's one that's relevant in my case. It's one
40:03
Speaker 4: that's relevant in most cases where you're just either going
40:07
Speaker 4: out of your way to not find any other evidence
40:10
Speaker 4: that's relevant to the case, or bury it or bury it,
40:14
Speaker 4: or you're just doing incredible mental gymnastics to justify what you.
40:22
Speaker 3: Want to justify instead of what you.
40:25
Speaker 1: Can In this's project, research has shown that many forensics techniques,
40:29
Speaker 1: such as hair microscopy, bitemark comparisons, firearm tool mark analysis,
40:34
Speaker 1: and shuprint comparisons have not been subjected to sufficient scientific
40:38
Speaker 1: evaluation and have resulted time and time again in tragic errors.
40:44
Speaker 1: No on, your case has things in common with the
40:47
Speaker 1: Center Part five case as well, right, another super high
40:50
Speaker 1: profile case where the DNA evidence was available and was
40:54
Speaker 1: hidden and lied about.
40:56
Speaker 4: And it's all about story, right, Like it's all about
40:59
Speaker 4: ay where the idea of well, I mean, you saw
41:04
Speaker 4: the documentary, so you saw how Nick Pisa was all
41:08
Speaker 4: like girl on girl crime a lot. Like people were
41:12
Speaker 4: just eating up the idea of some fem fatale version
41:17
Speaker 4: of me that was able to hypnotize two guys into
41:21
Speaker 4: doing my bidding and then commit murder and then somehow
41:25
Speaker 4: criminally mastermindedly get away with it.
41:28
Speaker 1: So you were now this crazed sex killer, except for
41:32
Speaker 1: you weren't gay, and you weren't a killer at all.
41:36
Speaker 6: You weren't a violent person whatsoever.
41:39
Speaker 4: Never had any criminal problems ever, never had any behavioral
41:43
Speaker 4: problems ever. It was just an interesting story. And I
41:47
Speaker 4: think that's what's most scary that I've learned about the
41:50
Speaker 4: criminal justice system, at least right now, is that often enough,
41:56
Speaker 4: what compels is not the facts, what compels is the story.
42:01
Speaker 4: And if the defense's story is a story that we've
42:05
Speaker 4: heard before, where there's a burglar who breaks in, takes
42:08
Speaker 4: advantage of the person who is home, and then runs
42:11
Speaker 4: away from the country. That, despite the fact that that's
42:15
Speaker 4: what the evidence is pointing to, is not the story
42:18
Speaker 4: that compels. It's not the story that sells, and it's
42:21
Speaker 4: not the story that ends up being stamped with everyone's approval.
42:26
Speaker 4: And that is the scariest thing about the criminal justice system,
42:32
Speaker 4: where it's treated in this like really morbid way like entertainment.
42:38
Speaker 4: And what counts is what compels, what you know, stimulates
42:43
Speaker 4: our most base instincts in relation to other people. Like
42:47
Speaker 4: it's just it's so weird how we think there's this
42:52
Speaker 4: like this upstanding institution that has so many you know,
42:55
Speaker 4: safeguards against that kind of thing, against authorities taking advantage
43:00
Speaker 4: of their position, and against you know, people being found
43:04
Speaker 4: guilty for things where there's no evidence of that. Like
43:07
Speaker 4: it still comes down to people getting riled up about
43:11
Speaker 4: something and whether or not.
43:13
Speaker 3: It's fake news. And if the fake news.
43:15
Speaker 4: Is compelling enough and if you hear it enough, and
43:17
Speaker 4: if it's if everyone's talking about it in this specific
43:20
Speaker 4: way enough, then that becomes the truth and that ends
43:26
Speaker 4: up defining my life unless I can somehow compel you otherwise,
43:33
Speaker 4: then that's crazy.
43:34
Speaker 3: I shouldn't have to compel anyone.
43:36
Speaker 4: I'm just a regular person walking around in this world
43:39
Speaker 4: and had this thing dropped on me. And the ability
43:44
Speaker 4: for an authority to drop that kind of devastation on
43:48
Speaker 4: your life should be justified, and so often it is.
43:52
Speaker 4: And very good prosecutors won't go after someone unless they
43:56
Speaker 4: have very good reason to. But other people have other intentions,
44:01
Speaker 4: and they have other agendas, and they're proud and they're flawed,
44:06
Speaker 4: and they don't want to admit it.
44:08
Speaker 6: So back to you.
44:09
Speaker 1: You end up in prison, case gets overturned on appeal,
44:15
Speaker 1: you get reconvicted. I mean, this is but in the meanwhile,
44:19
Speaker 1: you're just sort of languishing. It's probably a nice way
44:22
Speaker 1: to put it, in an Italian prison for a crime
44:26
Speaker 1: you didn't commit. And I was so touched to hear
44:29
Speaker 1: you say how you maintain this idealistic notion that if
44:35
Speaker 1: you just told the truth, eventually people would get it,
44:40
Speaker 1: they would want to not persecute you if you just
44:44
Speaker 1: told them the truth.
44:45
Speaker 3: I mean, so here, I'm about to break your heart.
44:48
Speaker 4: I held that belief, that idealistic belief up until my conviction,
44:52
Speaker 4: and then I thought, oh wow, this is the type
44:56
Speaker 4: of world. Oh yeah, okay, this is the type of
44:58
Speaker 4: world where I can be innocent but still be convicted
45:01
Speaker 4: and still have my life completely redefined by something I
45:05
Speaker 4: didn't do, and that could be the rest of my life.
45:07
Speaker 4: That could be my life. I could be that person.
45:10
Speaker 4: And you know, I faced another two years in prison
45:13
Speaker 4: with the prospect of being that person, of living the
45:16
Speaker 4: rest of my life in prison. No matter how innocent
45:19
Speaker 4: I said I was, that didn't mean that I was
45:21
Speaker 4: ever going to say fine, I did it, Like that
45:24
Speaker 4: was never going to come out of me, because like
45:26
Speaker 4: that was absurd and offensive, and it was offensive to
45:31
Speaker 4: Meredith's memory, and it was offensive to everything that every
45:36
Speaker 4: principle that I had in myself. But I also recognized
45:42
Speaker 4: that this world is one in which sometimes we humans
45:46
Speaker 4: make mistakes in relation to each other, and I could
45:49
Speaker 4: have been one of those who just got forgotten, and
45:52
Speaker 4: I did not know if I was ever going to
45:55
Speaker 4: get out of it. I had to wrap my mind
45:57
Speaker 4: around the idea and come to peace with the idea
46:00
Speaker 4: that I was just going to live my life in
46:03
Speaker 4: prison for something that I didn't do. No matter what
46:05
Speaker 4: I said, and you know, even after everything, even after
46:09
Speaker 4: I was acquitted and I was freed, I thought, oh well, okay, wow,
46:15
Speaker 4: I'm lucky. There are plenty of people who were in
46:19
Speaker 4: my situation who never got out. And then I had
46:22
Speaker 4: to come to peace with the idea that, okay, so
46:25
Speaker 4: I am free and I do get to have my
46:27
Speaker 4: life back. It's just, you know, I'm going to be
46:29
Speaker 4: one of those people who everyone in the world is
46:31
Speaker 4: going to think as a monster or suspect as a
46:33
Speaker 4: monster for the rest of my life, and I'm just
46:34
Speaker 4: going to have to come to peace with that. And
46:36
Speaker 4: you know, like when the Twitter trolls just roll in
46:39
Speaker 4: every day and like reaffirm that for you, I just
46:43
Speaker 4: had to come to peace with that. And then you know,
46:45
Speaker 4: the documentary comes out and suddenly people who just like
46:50
Speaker 4: really quickly drew conclusions about me that suggested that I
46:54
Speaker 4: was guilty. As soon as they saw that and saw
46:56
Speaker 4: that that I'm a real person, for one thing, and
47:00
Speaker 4: that the case was more complex than what they thought,
47:03
Speaker 4: suddenly they started vocalizing that they were sorry. Like people
47:08
Speaker 4: were saying sorry to me, I for we're like jumping
47:10
Speaker 4: to conclusions about me. And I never expected that to happen,
47:13
Speaker 4: Like I had come to peace with the idea that unless.
47:16
Speaker 3: You met me, you probably hated me.
47:19
Speaker 4: And as soon as I walk into a room, there's
47:21
Speaker 4: a doppelganger version of myself that's preceded me, that you're
47:25
Speaker 4: all judging prior to me even entering that room, and
47:28
Speaker 4: I'm going to have to relate to that doppelganger verbishun
47:32
Speaker 4: of myself before I'm ever going to be able to
47:34
Speaker 4: interact with you as a person.
47:36
Speaker 3: And I am continually finding.
47:40
Speaker 4: Like I'm the type of person who doesn't believe something
47:42
Speaker 4: unless I like, I see it and I can and
47:44
Speaker 4: there's proof of it, And so I am finding proof.
47:47
Speaker 4: I mean, I believe that human beings are good deep down,
47:50
Speaker 4: and I think that we're smart deep down, and so
47:53
Speaker 4: I feel like as soon as we come face to
47:55
Speaker 4: face with each other, we were able to recognize each
47:59
Speaker 4: other's humanity. What I am finding is with great joy,
48:04
Speaker 4: is that some people don't even need to see me
48:06
Speaker 4: face to face in order to realize that I'm a
48:08
Speaker 4: human being.
48:09
Speaker 3: And that means the world to me.
48:11
Speaker 4: Because I had come to peace with the idea that
48:13
Speaker 4: that wasn't going to be my reality, that was just
48:16
Speaker 4: going to be my fate to be that girl that
48:19
Speaker 4: people suspected forever and didn't really think of as a
48:21
Speaker 4: person and judged not as a person.
48:24
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I'm sorry.
48:26
Speaker 4: I hope it doesn't like break your art or like
48:30
Speaker 4: skew your understanding of what kind of person I am.
48:32
Speaker 3: But I'm just practical.
48:34
Speaker 4: It'd be nice if I could say, like, no, I
48:36
Speaker 4: knew in the end that it was going to work out.
48:37
Speaker 3: But the sad thing is you don't.
48:39
Speaker 4: Anyone who's wrongfully convicted doesn't know if it's going to
48:41
Speaker 4: work out for them, and it sucks, and it's sad,
48:45
Speaker 4: and your world is sad, and that's just the reality
48:48
Speaker 4: of it. And it takes people like you and people
48:52
Speaker 4: like me and people like our listeners to care about
48:56
Speaker 4: that situation enough to do something about it, because it's
48:59
Speaker 4: not just going to work itself out.
49:01
Speaker 3: It doesn't work itself out.
49:02
Speaker 4: People undo their mistakes, and it requires people to do it.
49:07
Speaker 6: And nobody wins.
49:09
Speaker 1: A wrongful conviction occurs because there's no favor there to
49:13
Speaker 1: the victim, or the victim's family, or to society, which
49:17
Speaker 1: in many cases allows the well in almost all cases
49:20
Speaker 1: allows the actual perpetrator to roam free and commit new atrocities,
49:26
Speaker 1: and of course then there's the very human toll on
49:28
Speaker 1: people like yourself. So I want to wrap up by
49:32
Speaker 1: talking about Amanda.
49:34
Speaker 4: Now, Now it's wonderful because I'm no longer being hunted
49:39
Speaker 4: down by some big, you know, crazy legal authority that's
49:44
Speaker 4: an entire country, like, I'm no longer having to deal
49:47
Speaker 4: with that kind of pressure in my life, and I
49:48
Speaker 4: can actually look forward as opposed to just sort of
49:52
Speaker 4: like be really present and be constantly aware of like
49:55
Speaker 4: what's coming at me. I can actually just like breathe,
49:58
Speaker 4: look forward and kind of I put myself out there.
50:01
Speaker 4: I'm writing a lot, I'm coming up with these creative
50:04
Speaker 4: projects to try to.
50:06
Speaker 3: To try to, you know, share my ideas with the world.
50:09
Speaker 4: And I'm here talking to you, and I'm going out
50:12
Speaker 4: of my way to vocalize my thoughts and experiences in
50:17
Speaker 4: ways that I didn't feel like I was able to
50:19
Speaker 4: before because I wasn't in a position of safety or ability.
50:25
Speaker 4: Even I thought for the longest time that my life
50:29
Speaker 4: was going to be one where I had to live
50:30
Speaker 4: in the shadows and cower, and that was going to
50:33
Speaker 4: be my life, and that's not what's happening to me now,
50:37
Speaker 4: And I'm so grateful for that, because I hated the
50:40
Speaker 4: idea that somehow I had to pay with my life
50:44
Speaker 4: for this thing that I didn't do, for the mistakes
50:47
Speaker 4: the prosecution make, for the terrible crime that Roudigade committed,
50:51
Speaker 4: Like somehow I had to pay with my life for that,
50:54
Speaker 4: and like people told me all the time, like, oh,
50:56
Speaker 4: you should just change your name so you don't have
50:57
Speaker 4: to deal with it. And eventually, you know, ten year
51:00
Speaker 4: years from now, you're not going to look the same,
51:01
Speaker 4: so it's not going to be different. And it's like,
51:03
Speaker 4: you know what, No, there's nothing wrong with being Amanda Knox.
51:06
Speaker 4: Amanda Knox didn't do anything. I'm I'm a good person.
51:09
Speaker 4: I'm just fine. And in fact, if you just gave
51:12
Speaker 4: me the chance to be a person, you would see
51:15
Speaker 4: that too.
51:16
Speaker 3: So I didn't like.
51:18
Speaker 4: The idea of like my myself being compromised somehow by
51:23
Speaker 4: something that had nothing to do with me. And instead,
51:26
Speaker 4: you know, I've I've now been able to like embrace
51:31
Speaker 4: the fact that this happened to me and that it's
51:33
Speaker 4: a part of me, but it's not, you know, the
51:35
Speaker 4: thing that defines me.
51:36
Speaker 3: The thing that defines me.
51:37
Speaker 4: Is how I've reacted to it, and that feels wonderful
51:43
Speaker 4: and like I'm I feel recognized in a way that
51:46
Speaker 4: I never imagined that I was going to feel. And
51:50
Speaker 4: it's so I'm so grateful, Like I'm so grateful that
51:54
Speaker 4: people are like seeing me as a human being and
51:57
Speaker 4: seeing what I went through and caring about it like
52:00
Speaker 4: no one had to do that. No one had to
52:02
Speaker 4: care about me, and they and they do and that
52:05
Speaker 4: means the world to me, and I just I just
52:09
Speaker 4: want other people to feel that.
52:12
Speaker 1: You know, well, I can tell you that it's it's
52:16
Speaker 1: quite extraordinary just being around you and soaking up the
52:22
Speaker 1: sort of energy that you put out there because it's
52:25
Speaker 1: so positive and it's so healing, and it's been, like
52:30
Speaker 1: I said, a humbling experience for me to be able
52:34
Speaker 1: to have you on the show now twice, and I
52:37
Speaker 1: look forward to watching you continue to grow.
52:41
Speaker 6: And heal and excel.
52:44
Speaker 1: And you know, and I know we'll be seeing each
52:47
Speaker 1: other again at various events, and we will both continue
52:52
Speaker 1: to fight for justice because that's what we're here for.
52:56
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flum and
53:01
Speaker 1: our guests, The Amazing, the one and only no Amanda.
53:07
Speaker 6: Thanks for listening.
53:08
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week on Wrowful Conviction with Jason Plumb.
53:17
Speaker 6: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you
53:20
Speaker 6: get your podcasts, it really helps.
53:23
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Nisnce Project and
53:25
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
53:28
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
53:32
Speaker 1: to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and
53:35
Speaker 1: get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
53:39
Speaker 1: Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is
53:41
Speaker 1: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
53:45
Speaker 1: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on
53:48
Speaker 1: Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm
53:52
Speaker 1: is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association
53:56
Speaker 1: with Signal Company Number one.
54:00
Speaker 4: Then the wor