In late 2007, American woman Amanda Knox was arrested and charged with the murder of her British flat mate Meredith Kercher in the Italian town of Perugia. Seven years on and the Knox case continues to make headlines around the world. The murder is of enduring interest to the tabloids because both the victim and the accused were young and beautiful and the alleged motive for the murder was a sex game gone wrong. Waiting to Be Heard is Knox’s account of the events surrounding the murder and her subsequent arrest and trials.
I’m liking
This case has always seemed a bit bizarre: Ivorian Rudy Guede’s DNA was found all over the crime scene and he was convicted of Kercher’s murder in a fast track trial in September 2008 but still the Italian prosecutors pursued Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, alleging that the couple, who barely knew Guede, also participated in the murder after Kercher refused to participate in a sex game. In the wake of her arrest, Knox was labelled “Volpe Cattiva” (literally “Wicked Fox”) by the Italian media who said she had “an angel’s face and a demon’s soul”. Knox has always protested her innocence, claiming she is just a regular, friendly and slightly quirky girl, unfairly pursued by the Italian police who developed an early theory of her involvement and ignored the lack of evidence to support it.
Knox’s memoire is gripping. As Knox tells it, the Italian police settled on her as a suspect because, in the wake of the murder, her behaviour did not conform to their expectations of a grieving flat mate. She wasn’t guilty, she says, just naïve and unaware she was under suspicion so less careful than she should have been about how her behavior might be interpreted. Her embraces with boyfriend Sollecito outside the murder scene weren’t the passionate embraces of excited and ruthless killers, she explains, but the actions of two shocked and scared young people seeking to comfort each other. Her “ta-dah” after donning protective boots and gloves at the crime scene was a misguided attempt to build rapport with the police and show her friendliness and willingness to assist them.
Knox doesn’t hold back on the personal detail. She can’t really. This book is her chance to persuade the public that’s she’s not the sexually deviant femme fatale painted by the prosecution and certain sections of the media. Yes, she had some casual sex on arrival in Italy she admits but soon realised it wasn’t for her. No, she didn’t casually buy a red g-string a couple of days after the murder in anticipation of further wild sex, just the first pair of underpants she came across (a pair of red bikini briefs with a cartoon cow on them) since she no longer had access to any of her clothes still inside the crime scene. Yes, Kercher had to speak to her about her toilet hygiene but there was no tension in their relationship.
The book paints a very unflattering picture of the Italian justice system, including the police, the prosecution service and some prison officials. I won’t detail Knox’s claims here since the Italians haven’t been shy in suing anyone repeating them, including her parents and her now former boyfriend, Sollecito, who has written his own book Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox, but it makes for uncomfortable reading for anyone who generally trusts in the integrity of government agencies.
Things that made me go hmmmm
I found Knox’s explanations of her behavior in the wake of the murder plausible and I wouldn’t be surprised if she is innocent as she claims. However, I do wonder whether it was sensible for her to highlight in the preamble to her book that she is now studying creative writing. Her detractors are likely to claim she has already penned her best piece of creative writing in Waiting to be Heard, which reportedly earned her a multi-million dollar advance.
The conclusion
This book will be of interest to anyone who thought this case was a bit odd and is interested in hearing Knox’s version of events. Knox was acquitted of the murder on appeal in 2011. However, in March 2013, the Italian Court of Cassation annulled her acquittal and ordered a new trial. A trial date has now been set for September this year. It is unclear as yet whether Knox will return to Italy for the trial.
Waiting to Be Heard is published by HarperCollins New Zealand and retails for around $37.
