EXCLUSIVE: Convicted twice and acquitted twice of murder, Amanda Knox describes the miscarriage of justice against Andrew Malkinson, who was wrongly branded a rapist, as “absolutely horrifying.”
Convicted twice and acquitted twice of murder, Amanda Knox describes the miscarriage of justice against Andrew Malkinson, who was wrongly branded a rapist, as “absolutely horrifying.”
Ms Knox says of Mr Malkinson, 59, who served 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit: ’It also sounds like a very typical wrongful conviction case, where authorities got tunnel vision. They went after the wrong person and then, all of these years later, after somebody has had their entire life derailed, they actually find the true perpetrator.”
This week, father-of-six Paul Quinn, 52, was given a 24 year sentence for the rape, which Mr Malkinson – a security guard working in Salford when he was arrested – has dubbed an “insult.”
Recalling her own first night in jail, Ms Knox – who served nearly four years in an Italian prison after her wrongful conviction for the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, 21 – says: “I imagine that [Malkinson] had the very same feeling that I had, which is ‘oh my god, this is a huge misunderstanding. ‘My innocence will ultimately become clear.
“I lived for years with the feeling like, ‘okay, there’s this crazy story that’s being put out there, but there are these institutions that I trust and there’s truth beyond a reasonable doubt.’”
Now married to US author and podcaster Christopher Robinson, 43, with whom she has a daughter, Eureka Muse, 5, and a son, Echo, 3, Amanda, 38, also believes misogyny was “absolutely 100%” involved in her own wrongful conviction.
Speaking to Tom Swarbrick on LBC radio, she says there was a “hyper focus” on her. Claiming she was portrayed as a “femme fatale,” she adds that the focus on “my appearance, my behaviour, [was] as an attempt to make me seem guilty.”
She feels the same misogyny has been faced by Lucy Letby, the 36-year-old former neonatal nurse, serving life for the murder of seven infants and attempted murder of seven others between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Ms Knox says she was seen as having “the face of an angel but is really a demon inside.” Now host of Doubt: The Lucy Letby Podcast, Ms Knox “leans in the direction” of Letby’s innocence.
She has written to her and says, if they ever speak, she won’t sugar-coat the fact that wrongly convicted people do die in jail. She says: “What I can guarantee her is that her life is worth living.
“No matter what circumstances we arrive at in life, we can find a way to find meaning out of them.”
Ms Knox, who lives in Seattle, USA, says she still thinks about Meredith, who she lived with in Puglia, Italy, where they were exchange students, every day, but that her parents “never seemed to want to speak to me.”
She says of Meredith, who came from Coulson, south London: “She has left an indelible mark on my life. She was a real person who I knew. Especially now that I’m a mother, I think about my daughter entering a world that is not fair and not kind and is not safe for women. She [Meredith] changed the course of my life.”
*Amanda Knox was speaking on LBC’s Drive with Tom Swarbrick and is availableon Global Player and the LBC App.
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