Two lives changed completely after the horrifying murder of Meredith Kercher in the cozy Italian place she shared with 3 roommates. Meredith, the friend Amanda Knox still remembers as this 21-year-old, bright-eyed girl who loved to dance, was given an excruciating end by someone deranged and violent. And Amanda, the American girl whose statement about the murder of her roommate was twisted in the wires of a language divide, was put through the most harrowing ordeal when all she wanted was for people to hear her truth. Amanda was a victim of the pointless bias and prejudice among the law enforcement officials leading the investigation. But the Amanda Knox that Hulu’s The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox wants us to see is far more than that. Being unabashedly herself brought a world of pain into her life when Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini and Head of Homicide Monica Napoleoni targeted her with their peculiar blend of personal frustration, unwarranted hostility, and a bungled sense of justice. But Amanda’s individuality has also been at the center of her very long trial of law and life, and that’s only helped her turn things around for the better in the long run, in real life too.
Spoiler Alert
Why was Amanda a suspect in Meredith Kercher’s murder?
The Amelie-esque beginning of Amanda’s story isn’t only for the sake of homage. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox shapes itself after Amanda’s favorite movie just for a flicker. And that’s to convey just how short-lived Amanda’s Italian dream was. Even as a child, Amanda wore her uniqueness on her sleeve when it got her the freak tag. When Amanda’s parents, Edda and Curt, got a divorce, and they eventually went on to have their own families, she didn’t let the divide pull her apart. Instead, she saw it as a way to be even more herself, only broader because two sets of people loved her and wanted the best for her despite her parents not being on talking terms. At 19, Amanda’s wish to study in Italy got her parents to share a couch for the first time in ages, and even then, they were thrilled to send their daughter off to the world she’d wished to explore ever since she was a child. The first few weeks of Amanda’s move to Italy were in no way indicative of what was to follow. It was the first time that Amanda had reached out to the world. It might not have been a slice of heaven in the villa she shared with Meredith, Filomena, and Laura, but Amanda found ways to seek out what fulfilled her fresh step into adulthood. In the little time they spent together, the year older Meredith took Amanda under her wing. At one point, between her job at the local pub, Le Chic, and her studies, all her senses were consumed by the instant attachment that grew between her and an Italian guy, Raffaele Sollecito. Spending all her time at her new beau’s place, Amanda felt embraced as her truest self, something that no one other than Meredith had made her feel after her move to Italy. But the bliss that she felt was elusive. In The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, the titular character’s fate has this almost supernatural quality to it. Through Amanda’s eyes, life’s ability to be way too thorough in its plans becomes this magical thing where her parents conceiving her in Seattle, Meredith taking her first steps in London, and then-magistrate Giuliano Mignini reading into a bird’s death and finding God in his job happen at the same time. It’s like it was all a plan to get Amanda to the fateful November day in 2007. She was supposed to come back to her place for a quick shower and to pick up a mop for Raffaele’s kitchen. Their plan was to go away together to Gubbio for the weekend. But when Amanda got to her place, odd occurrences kept piling up until she saw something that shook her. The front door was ajar, there was blood in the sink, and when Amanda got out of the shower, even the bathmat looked all bloody. But she still didn’t let it freak her out until she saw unflushed feces in the toilet and knew right away that nobody who lived there could’ve done it. At that moment, Amanda knew that someone had broken in. Meredith’s door being locked from the inside did get her worked up, but her attention was soon captured by the broken glass in the window and Filomena’s stuff being all messed up. A puzzled Amanda called the two people she felt most comfortable with; her mom, and Raffaele. But she also made sure to call Filomena, who initially took it lightly but then freaked out and started on her way back. When Raffaele got there, he kept his fear to himself so Amanda wouldn’t get too worried. Meredith wasn’t picking up her call. But the freakiest thing that Amanda saw was that the toilet had been flushed. That convinced her that whoever had broken in was there when she’d come over the first time. Oddly enough, even though Raffaele called the local police, the tech crimes police showed up to ask about two phones they’d found nearby. The sim in one of the phones having been registered to Filomena’s name brought them there. But even they didn’t know that they were walking into a horrifying crime scene. The true extent of the events that had happened the night before, the night Amanda spent with Raffaele, only came out when Filomena and the boys who stayed in the basement apartment came over and knocked down Meredith’s door. The police took their time. Even when they took over the crime scene, and Amanda saw the urgency and gravity given to the situation, she couldn’t get herself to believe what Filomena and the boys had already been grappling with. Meredith’s body was found in her bed; killed brutally, with obvious signs of sexual assault. Raffaele didn’t leave Amanda’s sight for a second. The officer investigating the crime, Head of Homicide, Valentina Greco, had judgment written all over her face when she looked at Raffaele’s affection for Amanda in her difficult time. Their kisses also caught the attention of the drama-chasing reporters who’d flocked around the scene. One look at Amanda, and Valentina made up her mind. Amanda was too free, too bold, too talkative, and too American for Valentina’s liking. And to Amanda’s horror, Valentina and Inspector Ginevra Ferrari based the very fundamentals of their investigation on their first impression of Amanda. She was terrified and traumatized. But even with her broken Italian and Raffaele’s help, she only tried to help Valentina with her investigation. And without considering the moral and ethical implications of scaring a young, foreign girl out of her wits, Valentina read Amanda’s helpful nature as arrogance and vilified her from the start. Misinformation and prejudice had already determined the course of the investigation by the time Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini swooped in and claimed his position as the primary investigator. Mignini was a religious guy who put too much faith in instincts instead of facts. Marry that with Valentina’s determined maligning of the American girl she didn’t like, and you’ve got a completely wayward investigation. The police were quick to buy the alibis of the boys who stayed downstairs, and Meredith’s boyfriend Giacomo. They were even easy on Laura, who’d been away in Rome and flew in, and Filomena. Amanda knew that Meredith’s British friends weren’t too fond of her. But what she didn’t know was that their disdain for her ran so deep that they’d imply that she was too promiscuous when they were questioned by the police. Amanda didn’t expect the trickery from the investigating officers and the aggressive disregard from Filomena either. The only one among them who showed her the slightest bit of kindness was Laura, but even that wasn’t without a selfish interest. The girls smoked pot that the guys downstairs grew in their garden. The Italian laws on marijuana usage had Laura trying to save her own neck, and like a good friend, Amanda agreed to lie to the police about their recreational habits. That’s what gave the cops the very lame excuse they used to cast their doubt on Amanda’s statement. You see, the basement apartment was the second crime scene. The bloody footprints led downstairs, and there was blood in random spots all over the apartment. When the cops looked around, they found the marijuana plants. The boys who stayed there thought it best to own up to their little drug gig. But the police’s priority wasn’t slapping drug charges on boys they deemed generally harmless. Their goal was to pin the crime on the girl whose quirks gave them the ick. Amanda’s lie about the pot was blown out of proportion as a legitimate way to cast suspicion on her. But the police were also sly enough to not scare her into lawyering up until they had her in their trap. The tapped phone that Amanda had no idea about was just the start. The Italian police went out of their way to seek out lies that didn’t exist so that they could justify the pointless hatred they felt for the pretty American girl. Makes you wonder if some of them weren’t jealous of her youth and the fact that she had her whole life ahead of her. There were undeniable sexist judgments that played unfair roles in the police’s desperation to make a boogeyman out of Amanda. The long, sleepless hours of questioning were just the beginning of the torment they’d put her through. They had plans for Amanda.
Did the police have any evidence against Amanda Knox?
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is never too direct with the ways everything went against Amanda. Instead, it takes its time dropping subtle hints of preconceptions and miscommunications that drove the investigation. On the day of the police discovering Meredith’s body, Mignini was already drowning in his own frustrations about a whole other harrowing chapter in the history of Italian crime, the murders committed by the Monster of Florence, a serial killer who hunted young couples and committed almost ritualistic murders. Mignini’s instincts about the case hadn’t been trusted by the court, even though the murders had been unsolved for over 50 years. He was so deeply consumed by the thoughts of very macabre crime scene pictures that he was hardly even present within himself when he drove over to the crime scene at Amanda’s place. When he claimed the crimes he solved were sent to him by God, Giuliano Mignini exposed the traditionalist approach he brought to the table. That, along with Valentina Greco’s immediate objection to the very existence of Amanda, compelled the cops to jump to conclusions that had no strong foundation. Valentina didn’t care to correct Mignini when he thought that Amanda had taken a shower after seeing the bloody mat, not before. That was bound to make Mignini wonder what kind of a person Amanda was. But the geriatric Italian prosecutor didn’t need any help running the entire investigation trusting his very impertinent and old-fangled ideas of how the world worked. He didn’t say it to anybody, but Meredith’s mangled corpse took him right back to where his head had been that morning, the victims of the Monster of Florence serial killer. He was working from a place of trauma. As a father of young girls, Mignini also came from a place where he was horrified by the crime spree against women in Italy, and terribly distressed by the idea of that kind of horror ever touching his kids. But what he didn’t realize was that by jumping to conclusions about Amanda, he was destroying yet another young girl’s life. That brings me to the never-ending discourse around pretty privilege and if it’s even a privilege at all. Unless you’re determined to believe otherwise, there’s no denying that Amanda lives in a world where women just can’t win. If their appearance falls short of the expectations that run the world, they’re judged for that. And there are pitfalls to being perceived as a very attractive woman as well. There’s this almost perverted undercurrent of hate and suspicion whenever a conventionally beautiful woman is in the eye of the storm. Her character’s questioned, her moral failings are assumed, and before you know it, the world has made a villain of her. What happened to Amanda wasn’t all that different. Hell, Ginevra could hardly keep her jealousy contained at the sight of all the affection and care that Amanda was receiving from Raffaele. To the likes of Ginevra, a woman who was treated well by a man had to be a cunning wench. And Ginevra wasn’t alone in that hatred. The infamous subversion of the nickname, “Foxy Knoxy,” was the marker of a very old, and very unyielding rot that society carries within itself. It’s not like Amanda didn’t make a few mistakes here and there. But she was in shock. She must’ve been too freaked out to even process information after finding out that her house had been broken into. So it sounds like she could’ve made an honest mistake when she told Valentina that the toilet was flushed after she’d come back with Raffaele. When Valentina and Mignini looked around and saw that the toilet was still unflushed, they immediately concluded that Amanda was trying to throw them off her scent by distracting them with unnecessary details. And by the time Mignini figured that it was a staged break-in, Valentina had already decided to point all her fury and latent frustrations at Amanda. She was only given her basic right to a translator when Ginevra’s patience ran thin. And yet, Amanda did everything they asked her to do without food or sleep for days on end. They knew they didn’t have anything solid against Amanda. Grasping for straws, they tore apart every single expression on her face, her physical gestures, and the words that got lost in translation. Amanda thought the cops were doing their job. So even when she was tired, and they tricked her into going back to the scene of the crime, she apologized to Valentina for even having communicated that she was exhausted. Valentina interpreted all of Amanda’s youthful quirks as blatant disrespect towards the tragedy that had happened. And even Mignini, a man of archaic understandings of criminology and people’s behavior, read Amanda’s panic attack at the scene of the crime as a sign of her quiet guilt. Was the man who thought a woman had to be involved because only a woman would cover the body with a blanket after murder really the right person to lead the investigation? Their entire case was based on things they’d learned from the boys downstairs. When they’d been away in Marche, they’d left the keys to Meredith so she could feed the cat. And boy did the police concoct wildly imaginary tales out of that information! They must’ve really wanted to close the case in a flash. And the easiest way to do that would be to pin the crime on someone the entirety of Italy would be desperate to throw stones at. Their witchhunt was fueled by a story they told themselves was true. Ginevra and Valentina convinced themselves that because Amanda was the only other girl who was in Perugia on the night of the murder and, as Meredith’s friend, she might have had knowledge about the keys being with Meredith, she had to be involved. Keep in mind that all the while they were coming up with these tales, Amanda wasn’t told that she was their primary suspect. Things fell into place just badly enough for law enforcement to find all the easy ways to target Amanda. Even the tech crimes police, the ones who’d brought the phones which later turned out to be Meredith’s, told Giuliano that Amanda and Raffaele were shocked to see them. There was an obvious explanation. They were shocked to see tech crimes police turn up when Raffaele had just finished calling the local police. But Mignini’s dislike for Amanda’s progressive approach to intimacy and comfort turned her into a monster in his eyes. They didn’t have a crumb of evidence against Amanda. But that didn’t keep them from pursuing her with the ferocity of bloodhounds.
Why did Amanda implicate Patrick Lumumba?
The unmissable pattern of the police running an entirely unfair operation against Amanda Knox protrudes even further when you see that they did have leads to follow. The hair found in Meredith’s room belonged to a Black man. For a moment there, you can’t see Mignini beyond his relief over the fact that the suspect was, as he’d say, “non-EU.” As the Black Man staying in the downstairs apartment, Riccardo had his reasons to worry that the police would gang up on him. But his alibi was solid. And when the four boys were asked about any other Black man who might have come around recently, they mentioned a certain enigmatic figure who went by the name “the Baron.” They met him at the basketball court, the same one that Meredith and Amanda used to pass by everyday. This Baron figure is very clearly Rudy Guede, the man they met on the basketball court and partied with. The police should’ve been especially thorough with their search for the Baron after the boys had already told them the same toilet incident that had happened when he’d spent time at their apartment. The people they questioned at the basketball court were clearly trying to stay out of trouble. And despite the man’s obvious connection to the crime, something that would even be unmissable to people who didn’t solve crimes for a living, the investigators dropped that lead and went chasing Amanda. The cultural and personality differences made Amanda trust them more than she should have. And the same things made the police target her relentlessly.
When nothing strong could be found against Amanda, the police resorted to much worse means to get her to cower. They had a young, foreign student who’d just lost her friend to an unthinkable tragedy in their hands, and instead of comforting her, they weaponized her distress and turned it around on her. They tricked Amanda into coming to the police station by asking Raffaele to drop by the station late at night. And when they isolated her, surrounded her to intimidate her, and purposefully made her uncomfortable to make her fumble, the police knew what they were doing. When they told her that Raffaele refused to be her alibi for the night of the murder, they were probably lying to force her to say things that they wanted to hear from her mouth. One look at what they do to her to get a confession out of her, and you’d know that the police who were investigating Meredith’s murder had no wish to actually catch the killer at all. All they wanted was to punish Amanda for being different, for being herself. By that point, Edda was tired of sitting on her hands, not knowing what they were doing to her daughter in a foreign country. She didn’t really trust Amanda to be able to take care of herself. And considering just how trusting Amanda had been of the police; at no point did she think about contacting the US embassy or getting herself a lawyer; her mother had reasons to worry. But between all the flights she had to take, the Italian law enforcement had ensnared her daughter in a trap of their own making. By this point, Amanda’s question about a lawyer, along with everything she said, were instantly disregarded by the police. Not only was she treated like an unstable person whose memory couldn’t be trusted because she’d smoked pot with her boyfriend on the night of her friend’s murder, but they asked her to do the impossible and time stamp each of her activities on that night. Failing to perform such a stunt for them only led to them seizing her phone. They didn’t even let her pick up her mother’s frantic calls. Amanda didn’t know what she could do to prove her innocence when they kept insisting on believing the misinterpreted version of a text she had sent to her boss at Le Chic, Patrick Lumumba. When Patrick had told her that she didn’t need to come to work that night, Amanda replied with a casual “see you later.” The Italian cops desperately clung to the idea that that text was a plan for the two of them meeting later that night, no matter how desperately Amanda tried to convince them that it was a general goodbye phrase common in America. It wouldn’t take you long to realize that the reason they’re yelling over Amanda, deafening her with questions, and even hitting her, was because they wanted to scare her into confessing. As a Black man, Patrick was someone they could pass off as the killer. That’s why they terrified Amanda into agreeing with their narrative about Patrick and her having met and come back to her place that night. When she was signing the statement which stated that she had agreed that she had been at her place with Patrick on the night of Meredith’s murder, Amanda was barely in her senses. They had gaslit her into believing that she was traumatized by the murder, and that’s why she’d tried to forget about the incident altogether. By the time Amanda got her bearings and tried to retract that statement, her words were of no value anymore. The Italian police had their scapegoat. With the killer on the loose, Amanda was taken into custody. Her mother had to find out about her daughter’s “confession” from the newsstand. So it makes sense that in the 2022 timeline, Edda was very much against Amanda coming back to Italy. Now a mother to an infant and married to Chris, Amanda had a lot of unfinished business with the man who persecuted her, Giuliano Mignini. She wasn’t out of danger. In fact, the moment they found her, they would’ve thrown her back in prison. But Amanda knew that she didn’t do what they convicted her of. And for her own sake, she needed to meet the man who changed her life for the worse for apparently no reason at all.
