Even if you strip the gory details away from the story of how Amanda Knox, an American student studying in Italy, was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her roommate, it’s the stuff that nightmares are made of. They wouldn’t have made so many shows based on life in prison if it wasn’t a spectacle of sorts. And something is only a spectacle when it’s outlandish in some way. Now imagine a sweet 20-year-old girl trapped in a bizarre narrative concocted by the police and locked away in a prison where no one speaks her language. In the 3rd episode of Hulu’s The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, life’s made into a dreadful hellscape for the titular character when her days in prison begin. And we also have a rather complicated look at the foundation of Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini’s very being, which, if misinterpreted, can even come off as a justification of his actions. But an explanation doesn’t automatically make things reasonable. And nothing that Amanda went through can be synonymous with reasonable.
Spoiler Alert
Why was Amanda Knox imprisoned?
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox notices the aspects of the infamous conviction of an innocent young woman that might’ve been overlooked in lesser true crime shows. Everything about Amanda’s confession and imprisonment was so loud and chaotic that no one, not even her sympathizers , stopped to think about her grief. Amanda lost a friend she was starting to get really close to. The memories of the two of them just being young girls in their bathroom–playing with fake tattoos, talking piercings, boys, and halloween plans–stood in brutal contrast to Amanda’s circumstances when she was taken to Cappane prison after the police had bullied a false confession out of her. She was terrified, but still naive when it came to the hell that she was about to plunge into. It bothered her deeply when she was commanded to strip, but she still wondered if it was a witness protection facility. If anything, Amanda’s disbelief that she was in prison supported her claim of innocence. But no one heard or understood her in the prison run by a creep like Warden Banti. Clearly planned by the Italian police to trick something incriminating out of her, Banti’s perverted interrogation was bound to make Amanda feel gross and unsafe in the prison. But making her feel safe was never on their agenda to begin with. Amanda’s disillusionment from the hopeful idea that she’d try to find beauty even in that horror just to survive was quick and painful. Even her mother was treated awfully when she tried to visit her daughter. As though it was an alien idea that a mother could have a different surname from her daughter, they delayed Edda’s efforts to meet Amanda for as long as they could. When they finally met, it was the first touch of comfort Amanda had felt in a long time. It must’ve shattered Edda to be so helpless as her daughter was stuck in the wicked design of the law. Yet she had to make sure that her daughter was innocent. And Amanda, understanding as she was, didn’t feel attacked by her mother’s confusion in the face of such unforeseen chaos. Their entire conversation was recorded. And because Amanda told her mother that the police owed her an apology, their disdain for her grew exponentially. She was branded cold and arrogant. And that’s the idea that the entirety of Italy was fed by law enforcement.
What was Giuliano Mignini’s narrative about Amanda Knox?
Giuliano Mignini’s arc being so persistently present in Amanda’s story may feel weird, but in the show and in real life, the prosecutor who dragged Amanda through hell plays a rather complicated part in the story. In real life, after being acquitted by court, Amanda kept in touch with Giuliano and they formed an unlikely friendship. She even went back to Italy to meet him and bury the hatchet in 2022, and that’s something we caught a few glimpses of in the first episode of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Amanda’s curiosity over what might’ve driven Mignini to attack someone with what seemed like a very personal rage is the reason why we’re even exploring his peculiar background. Mignini loved Perugia and was endlessly proud of his Etruscan heritage. You can see the seeds of misogyny and an unhealthy idea of sexuality being implanted in him by his religious mother when he was a wee kid. His house was close to the women’s prison. And that prompted Mignini’s mother to make sure that he knew all about the devilish trickeries of women. His father’s early death made him the man of the house way before he was ready to take on that responsibility. The Westerns he watched gave him this distorted notion of virtue and masculinity. He had to be a protector and fix Perugia’s ailments. The erosion of Italy’s legacy perpetuated by growing crime syndicates, drug abuse, and societal decline aggrieved him deeply. But what affected him the most were the crimes committed by one of history’s most notorious ritual killers, the Monster of Florence. The serial killer targeted couples who fooled around outdoors, so the killings had to have been driven by a depraved sense of virtue. Even as a detective, Mignini never felt like he’d done enough to help his family, his city, and his country. So he became a prosecutor to do God’s work. And as his paranoia over the morbid workings of the serial killer’s mind grew, he saw that fear everywhere. Even after the serial killer’s death, Mignini continued to insist that the crimes were being committed by a cult, and therefore a group was responsible. The newspapers slamming Mignini’s conspiracy theories only fueled his desperation to fix everything even further. His faith was on the line. And as fate would have it, he was brought in to lead Meredith’s murder case just when he was in dire need of a purpose and a sign that he was, in fact, God’s soldier. The horrible state of Meredith’s body shook him to his core. He was sickened by the idea that there were people who wanted to destroy beauty, youth, and hope. But much more than his personal crises went into the operation that he ran against Amanda. He didn’t sign off on the press conference where the police had taken the liberty of declaring the case closed. With a confession, no evidence to support it in court, a closed case, and three people behind bars, all eyes were on Mignini. He was desperate for a crumb of evidence that could connect Lumumba, Knox, and Sollecito to the murder of Meredith Kercher. But just 3 days before he had to present the case in front of Judge Matteini, the police had nothing to give him. A man of outdated notions of gender and criminal behaviour, Mignini came up with a very convenient story. He imagined Amanda as the orchestrator of a vile sex game, and the woman responsible for the small wounds on the victim’s chin. After all, they had that hickey on Amanda’s neck that they meant to pass off as a wound she’d gotten from the imaginary scuffle that had taken place in the villa. When the time for the deposition came, Amanda’s mom got her lawyers, and they hoped to at least get her to house arrest. But the formidable prosecutor was telling a story he actually wanted to believe. And in his narrative, Amanda was a freak who’d brought home men who’d ended up killing her friend. Amanda never hoped to turn to God for comfort. She was an atheist. So it was lucky that the prison priest, Don Saulo, didn’t keep his help and guidance exclusive to the believers. He tried to be there for Amanda when her world turned into a nightmarish place she couldn’t escape. Her plea for house arrest was denied, a news that her lawyers had a hard time telling her. And the keys were with people who had no wish to let her go free.
Whose bloody fingerprints were found in Meredith Kercher’s room?
The only reason Amanda’s mom and lawyers didn’t lose hope was that the police didn’t have anything more than the story they’d been trying to get her to admit. But the police were never playing fair. The fact that she was hit, treated like a crazy person, and forced to imagine a narrative that hadn’t happened should’ve told Amanda that they weren’t playing by the rules. What got Mignini into trouble there was his need to hold on to every detail that helped him believe in the story he created around Meredith’s murder. He was particularly adamant about his theory that Meredith was raped, even though the coroner, Luca Lalli, found no evidence to suggest that. Even the time of death couldn’t be determined because the police had kept Luca outside for long enough for the body to have gone cold. Luca wasn’t comfortable with the police blasting a narrative without any evidence, and he was honest about his findings when the reporters came. Inevitably, Giuliano didn’t like Luca’s audacity to go around and tell the press about the deceptive rape theory. Luca was fired. But Giuliano needed something to nail Amanda to prove his faith to himself. They were checking Raffaele’s kitchen knives for traces of Meredith and Amanda’s DNA. And Giuliano got his lucky break when a DNA test on one of Raffaele’s knives came positive on both counts. This is a tricky part of the story that the police fabricated. It would later become proven that the DNA found on the knife was too minor for it to be deemed the murder weapon. The crime scene was handled with a shocking amount of negligence to the possibility of contamination. Meredith’s DNA could’ve gotten on the knife from something else in the evidence that had traces of Meredith’s blood. And there was a whole lot of blood. But this “evidence” gave Giuliano’s case a leg to stand on. And the rest is a story of unimaginable violation of Amanda Knox’s human rights, perpetrated by people who supposedly protected the law.
In the third episode of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, the police’s deviant game reached a point where she was told that her blood test came positive for HIV. In real life, Amanda was falsely given this devastating news so she could be forced to write down the names of her past sexual partners. They meticulously planned this around Amanda’s hearing, which was a win that Giuliano was sure of. He attacked Amanda with the same aggression that he’d been denying in favor of the police. For rightfully accusing the police of being manipulative and violent when Amanda had been questioned about Patrick Lumumba, she’s yet again screamed at by a scary man. Giuliano was expecting a lot of heat for the arrest of Lumumba. There were protestors raging against the meaningless arrest of a Black man. Although Giuliano could’ve written off his alibis with the argument that Meredith’s time of death couldn’t be determined, he needed to stay on the safer side. It would’ve been easier for him to accuse Amanda of lying about Patrick Lumumba. What Amanda didn’t know was that Giuliano had already bagged everything he needed to paint her as a sex freak and the “American Witch” for public eyes. What Amanda came back to after the traumatizing hearing was a cell that had been ransacked, and not subtly, mind you. Her journals, where she’d written down her thoughts and the names of her sexual partners, were stolen. That was the first time that Amanda turned on the TV in her cell. She’d been advised against it for the sake of her own sanity.
What happens to Amanda Knox in the ending of this week’s episode is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone. The police have her journals, her Myspace account, and her life up for scrutiny. Every news channel all over the world had “Foxy Knoxy’s” salacious tale of sexual depravity and murder on. The police had told the world that Amanda Knox was a sex freak, a depraved young woman with a promiscuous past, and a psychopath who took part in a sick game that took her friend’s life. But not all was well in Giuliano’s world. The DNA report on the bloody fingerprints in Meredith’s room didn’t match Lumumba, Sollecito, or Knox. There was now evidence of someone else’s presence there. And that effectively means that Giuliano’s case is far from closed. He may have succeeded in his witchhunt and the global character assassination of a girl, but he isn’t even close to solving the death of Meredith Kercher.
