Amanda knox speaks her heart out:Regrets about Kercher
Amanda Knox, in trial for murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher, has nightmares and bad memories of her bad time she had in Italian courts and prison. But she has only warm memories of Kercher and says she would like to visit her grave one day.
Her recall of those years has moments of regret, anger and sadness. Also among her emotions are warm thoughts of Kercher and empathy for her family.
"And I really want them to understand that my need for justice for myself is not in contradiction with theirs," she said.
Knox recalled her short time, a mere six weeks, with Kercher, who was also studying in Perugia.
"She talked about how she wanted to be a journalist like her dad. And she talked about her sister. And if that's all I can give them is this memory that I have of her to add to... all of theirs that they can carry with them when she's gone."
"About how she wanted to be a journalist like her dad and she talked about her sister … if all I can give them is this memory that I have of her to add to all theirs that they can carry with them when she's gone."
That does not seem likely. The Kercher family has dismissed suggestions of any reconciliation with Knox and frequently complained that the media coverage of the death has focused more on "foxy Knoxy" than the victim.
Knox told Sawyer that on the night of Kercher's death she had sex, smoked a joint, and joked and chatted with Raffaele Sollecito, her boyfriend. Despite getting high she still knew what happened on that night, she said.
She told Sawyer: "I want the truth to come out. I'd like to be reconsidered as a person." She was aware of being labelled a seductress, a she-devil and other names in the media, but: "They're wrong."
However Knox's defenders said she was innocent and was forced to say things she didn't mean during a lengthy police interrogation while bumbling Italian police contaminated the crime scene, producing flawed DNA evidence. Meanwhile an Ivorian man is serving a 16-year sentence for Kercher's killing.
Fox was initially acquitted of the murder after a trial that caught the imaginaton of the world and she returned home to America to take up life as a student in Seattle. But in a shock decision in March Italy's highest criminal court overturned that acquittal and ordered a new trial for Knox.
Knox told Sawyer the court's decision was "incredibly painful" and she felt as if she had to crawl through another field of barbed wire after reaching what she thought was the end.
Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new legal proceedings and the young woman, who has always protested her innocence, shows little sign of going back for any sort of fresh legal ordeal. In the Sawyer interview she repeated her insistence that she had nothing to do with Kercher's death. "I can't be afraid right now. I have to be ready to defend myself," she said.
During the interview Knox was shown readjusting to life back in America with shots of her studying and playing a guitar while singing a pop song that she learned in jail. She had been changed by her experiences, she said. "My family was expecting the old Amanda back. I am not quite as chirpy anymore."
Knox did admit to moments of despair while in jail, confessing that she had contemplated taking her own life. "What happened to me was surreal. But it could have happened to anyone."
Knox has mostly kept a low profile since her return to the US. That has changed as she this week published a memoir of her experiences. The book, Waiting to be Heard, was the subject of a publishing industry bidding war that resulted in her receiving a reported advance of $4m for her version of events.
The story details her upbringing in Seattle, her early fascination with Italy and her teenage sexual encounters before embarking on what she thought was a year of adventure. She describes Meredith Kercher as "exotically beautiful", sophisticated with her British cool and a good friend, and denies that the pair fell out over men.
When she was asked about the events of Kercher's brutal murder, Knox turns, in the words of one reviewer, to "minutely detailed efforts … to act as her own defence lawyer".