Knox Fooling Anyone

Today's post is a chronicle of my thoughts while watching Netflix's Amanda Knox special. Twice.

Let me just start off by saying that when you Google search Amanda Knox her descriptor is American woman. Like how Ed Sheeran's is singer-songwriter and Beyonce's is goddess most divine. Amanda's claim to fame is being an American woman. So I sang along with The Guess Who while writing this post.

As every true crime addict slash magazine reader knows, Amanda Knox was considered guilty by the media for her lack of grief when her roommate Meredith Kercher was murdered in Italy. But is that fair? She was deemed a sociopath for her lack of emotions but she had only known the girl for a few weeks. I also have a hard time crying at the appropriate times. I might bawl for an hour when my favorite Project Runway contestant gets eliminated but will never cry during Marley & Me. Does that make me a monster? So for fairness's sake let's examine the other evidence.

Our story begins in Seattle. Amanda's hometown. Everyone in the Pacific Northwest is a psychopath, all that rain makes people do crazy things. Case closed. She says she had a happy life before Italy. Happy? In Seattle? I don't buy it. This girl is hiding something.

Amanda heads over to Italy to carbo-load for a year. She is staying in a "flat" (European word for house?) with British student Kercher and 2 Italian women. Seems like the Italians were never suspects. Smells like home Italian cooking, and I don't mean the Olive Garden.

Living my teenage dream, upon her arrival Amanda receives a stamp in her passport and an Italian boyfriend named after a ninja turtle. This Raffaele character...his accent is adorable. Listening to him reminded me that Italians like to add an h to the beginning of words that start with vowels. My game theory professor did the same thing. Amanda brags about how wonderful Raffaele is by mentioning that he wanted to get her a perfume...which is code for you stink. That ain't romance girl.

Without further ado, let's dive right into murder! The crime scene is explained and we hear from lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini himself. While I love watching La Vita E Bella in the original Italian, the subtitles here are frustrating me because I can no longer play spider solitaire while I watch.

And we have another guest star. Nick Pisa, a British journalist who speculates on why locals were so willing to talk to him. "Wow I've got a big British journalist talking to me, I'm now a big star as well." This guy is really overestimating his importance. Self-proclaimed "big" British journalists fall somewhere below Miley Cyrus's siblings in American fame. I don't know...something about the conversion rate? Nick Pisa Crap talks about the power trip he got from covering this case. It becomes clear that Nick committed the murder to further his own career. Roughly 20 minutes into this documentary and I already know whodunnit.

Knox's alibi for the night of the murder is an evening in with her boyfriend. She says they watched the French film Amelie and the read German Harry Potter? Come o! No American is THAT multi-cultural. We barely understand the metric system that's just playing tug of war with a decimal. Now you're going to tell me that in addition to Italian and French, Knox has mastered German, a language so difficult that Mark Twain, one of the most brilliant American minds of all time, wrote an entire essay about it's complexity? I'm skeptical.

As Amanda recalls finding the crime scene, she claims that she didn't get creeped out by the blood in the bathroom and wasn't worried until she saw feces in the toilet which I think is totally valid. I cut myself shaving at least 9 times out of 10 because I refuse to put my book down to shave so blood in the bathroom could just mean that her roommate is as pathetic as I am. And just imagine coming home to find foreign feces in your toilet. I for one, would be terrified.

Side note - at this point I'm starting to doubt the subtitles. Either they're not telling us everything or it takes 5 Italian words to say 1 English word.

Now we search for a murder weapon. The investigators ask Amanda if any of the kitchen knives are missing. She's been there for less than a month. I've lived in my current apartment for over a year and I would have no idea if any of our knives were missing unless I pulled out 5 and they were labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 6.

A few days after Meredith's body is discovered, Amanda and Raffaele are arrested. We hear a phone call between Amanda and an American friend who is probably the reason most people hate Americans. This girl is an idiot. She tells Amanda not to be scared but to remember she's 20 and with Raffaele, and that this is the best year of her life. I don't care if I'm with Jason Momoa AND Miles Teller, if I'm being accused of murder in a foreign country, this year sucks.

At this point Amanda's boyfriend Raffaele says he was home alone the night of the murder, changing his story and saying that Amanda wasn't with him. He claims Amanda pressured him to lie and be her alibi and he seems so naive and innocent but I think that's just the language barrier speaking (in broken English). This is just like Emerald City, I don't know who to trust.

The Netflix special shows the text message Amanda says she received from her boss the night of the murder, a text that relieved her from work duties for the evening. This message clearly says "ci vediamo" and as everyone who has seen The Lizzie McGuire Movie knows, that means we will see each other, exactly what Amanda said that the text read. Another international crime solved by Hilary Duff.

Welcome back Nick Pisa bragging about how famous he is thanks to this poor girl's murder. He says "I don't think I ever had so many front pages" so...yeah he definitely travels the world committing crimes to he can report on them and become a "big British journalist" which sounds like the plot of a movie I fell asleep during.

We finally find the murder weapon, a knife, in Raffaele's house. But again, no one suspects him which is a testimony to how sexist (and trusting of DNA evidence) people are. Amanda's DNA is on the knife handle while Meredith's DNA is on the blade. Highly suspicious. Knox admits she can't explain it but I can. Who among us hasn't used a knife to cut something and then licked the knife and put it back in the drawer? Just me? I'm so glad my roommates don't support my artistic endeavors by reading this blog. I'm saving water really, you should all be thanking me.

Enter some guy named Rudy Guede, a local thief, whose DNA was all over the apartment. And even though everyone still thinks Amanda is totally guilty, Rudy is convicted and is currently in jail for the murder. But the documentary isn't over yet because his story wasn't interesting enough. I get that this special is called Amanda Knox and not Rudy Guede for a reason but that fact that he is sentenced to 16 years and discussed here for less than 16 minutes makes him seem like a scapegoat.

We're back to "Foxy Knoxy" now as the media calls her. She's portrayed as the ultimate femme fatale even though she looks more Jessica Biel than Jessica Rabbit. During the trial it comes out that Amanda and Meredith were basically opposites...that makes for a cute sitcom not a homicide.

Amanda and Raffaele are both found guilty and sentenced to 26 years and 25 years respectively. Not sure why she gets an extra year but I'm not thrilled about it. Amanda and Raffaele break up after their whirlwind 5 day romance because apparently when you renege on being someone's alibi, they fall out of love with you.

Two years later Amanda is able to appeal the DNA evidence. A reporter comments on how she could use some makeup. She's been in jail for 2 years dude not an Aveda salon. During the appeal we learn that a vital piece of DNA evidence was found 46 days after the murder. And it only takes two Italian years of assumed guilt for everyone to realize that this is insane. And we haven't even gotten to the DNA contamination on the murder weapon yet.

Now we see a series of interviews with Americans commenting on the situation. Donald Trump tells everyone to boycott Italy. That's not even a joke he literally said that.

Finally Amanda and Raffaele are acquitted based on insufficient proof and Knox returns to Seattle and is more than welcomed by a horde of reporters.

Then...like 4 years later, Italy changes their mind and is just like hang on, can I change my answer? This is totally not fair in my (correct) opinion. After a new guilty verdict which is eventually reversed by the Italian version of the Supreme Court, Italy says they are acquitted because they didn’t commit the crimes. I find that hilarious because Law & Order will normally say something to the effect of “dismissed due to insufficient evidence" so it's pretty obnoxious of Italy to unilaterally proclaim their innocence. In any event, it is agreed that Italy should not be making any major decisions ever again.

Italians are pissed, like have some gelato guys.

Amanda goes back to Seattle and thanks her…fans?

Raffaele says he doesn’t know how to start over after 4 years in prison, 6 months in solitude. That’s horrific. I would give up after 6 minutes in solitary confinement. I need to live in a herd. Amanda also has a hard time adjusting. When she's in line at the grocery store people will talk to her about how they know her from the news which is a great way to get killed if you think she's the murderer. Morons.

The British journalist says we have to point a finger at the police and prosecution but of course the real murderer would say that. He explains that journalism leaves no time for double checking which is the exact opposite of what I was taught. In journalism school.

After an hour and a half I've decided that Nick Pisa is the real sociopath here. I have no idea who killed Meredith Kercher. And I am never going to maybe/maybe not commit a crime in Italy.

This case is now 3rd on my list of questions to ask God in Heaven right behind who killed JonBenet Ramsey and why do mini M&Ms taste so much better than regular M&Ms?