Ep 315: The Mouth of the Wolf: Amanda Knox Returns to Italy with Amanda Knox and Christopher Robinson, Part 1

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice.

Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once.

Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates.

Not available in all states or situations. Price is very based on how you buy.

Take the exit. Turn right. Into the drive-through.

Nope, I'm making dinner tonight.

You don't have time. Josh has practice.

Oh, that's right. I'll just get a salad.

And fries.

No, just the salad.

But salad cancels fries.

Salad only.

Fries.

Salad.

Food noise isn't fair, but mochi help is.

The affordable GLP one-source that puts you on the road to successful weight loss.

Hey, can I get the...

Fries.

Salad. Sorry.

Learn more at joinmochi.com.

Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists. Results may vary.

I've learned some really hard truths.

The hard way.

I am Amanda Knox.

I am a mom.

I am a writer.

And I am the girl who was accused of murder.

That doesn't go away.

She was perceived as the OJ of Italy.

I got treatment from the media, but the media did not put me in prison.

He did.

I wanted to know if the person who hurt me cared.

So I went back to confront the man who put me in prison face to face.

I think if you're going because you think it's going to heal you, it could be crushing.

If it doesn't do what you want it to do.

I was scared for her.

I tried to talk her out of it.

Having my doubts.

They thought it was a trap.

I named this rope and there's going to be nothing between me and him.

I think I'm a little in shock.

Hey lovely listeners and welcome back to Crime Analyst in the Intelligence Cell.

And today I'm joined by two very special guests.

Amanda, you've been on Crime Analyst before.

But Christopher, this is your first entree to Crime Analyst.

And you're very welcome, both of you.

So thank you for joining me.

Who wants to go first and give a intro as to who you are?

Thanks for having us.

I'm Amanda Knox.

I am the subject of Chris's documentary, Mouth of the Wolf.

I'm also his wife.

So he got away with that somehow.

Most famously, as your listeners may recall, I was caught up in the midst of a very scandalous true crime story

that involved the horrific rape and murder of my roommate by a local burglar.

But then the catastrophic prosecution and law enforcement presented this insane theory that I orchestrated a murder orgy.

And it went through eight years of trials.

And here I am a free person, but certainly not free of the stigma of having been associated with the crimes of another man.

And those lingering consequences and my quest for sort of finding closure around that and a sense of justice for myself are really the subject of what Chris presents in this new documentary that he worked on.

Yeah. And so, you know, I'll give you a little background on myself because I think I come at Amanda's story from a unique place in part because I'm not really a true crime person.

I never have that.

There's no offense to true crime people.

Obviously we're talking to you.

I was in grad school studying poetry when Amanda was going through everything in Italy.

So I had my nose deep in Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Frost.

And, you know, I was memorizing poems and writing poetry in Boston.

And a true crime story happening in Italy was like the furthest thing from my mind.

But I am from Seattle.

And I'm, you know, my brother was still living in Seattle at the time.

And I heard whisperings of this case through the kind of Facebook network because everyone was talking about it.

And so it was hard not to like hear the name in no matter who you were.

And so by the time Amanda kind of came on my radar, this was in 2015 after spending some time in grad school doing poetry.

I had shifted into writing novels and I had just sold my first book and I was publishing my first novel.

And it was a big deal for me.

I was very excited.

I had begged everyone I'd ever met to come to this book launch party in Seattle.

And I learned shortly before that that Amanda Knox was writing a book review of my book for the local paper.

And I was like, Amanda Knox, that's, I know that name, you know, who is that again?

And I realized, okay, this is this woman who there was something that happened abroad, some crime.

She went to prison, she got out.

It's about all I knew.

I didn't have any of the details.

I had never read any, you know, nothing in tabloids or people magazine.

I hadn't read her book, even though she had a book, you know, I just thought, okay, well, sure.

Anyone who wants to review the book, especially if it's a good review, which it was great, you know.

And so then she shows up to the book reading and immediately whisper, whisper, whisper people in the room.

This is Seattle, after all, everyone recognizes her except me.

And they're like, look, who's here?

The room was packed, probably 200 people.

And she thought she could slip into the back, maybe anonymously, but the only seats left were at the very front.

So I had to walk in front of everybody to find a spot.

And I was just like, oh my god.

And so, you know, I shook her hand that night and said thanks for the book review.

But I didn't have time to really even care.

I had butterflies.

It was my big night to give my first-ever book reading.

After that, she asked me for an interview for the paper to talk about the next project I was working on.

And that led to us watching Star Trek and drinking scotch and kind of hanging out late into the night.

And at the end of that night, I said, you know, this was really fun.

You're a cool person.

We should be friends.

And I meant that.

But it was also, I don't know if you know this, but Seattle is very famously known for what's called the Seattle Freeze.

People are not very openly friendly.

Or at least they don't like follow up.

Yeah.

Like you might like hang out at a party, but then never talk to each other and you know that kind of thing.

It's passive-aggressive is kind of the default in Seattle.

And so it is.

A shy, maybe.

Maybe shy.

Just awkward.

Yeah.

So I meant that, but for Amanda, it was a big deal because this was just maybe two months after she had been definitively exonerated by Italy's highest court.

And so finally, you know, she was like, well, wow.

Can I just like make friends with people like a normal person now?

Like he was the first normal person friend that I made basically after everything was finally over.

So we became friends and we were friends for about nine months until our various romantic situations happen to collapse kind of for independent reasons around the same time.

And we wound up single and started dating.

But I think a key thing in our developing friendship and eventually in our romance was that I didn't Google her.

I made a conscious choice not to Google her because as soon as I, people in my life knew that I was hanging out with Amanda Knox.

They all had questions.

Do you think she's weird?

Do you think she did it?

You know, what is it like to talk to her?

Is she autistic?

And all, you know, all this stuff.

And I felt so gross to me.

I felt so icky.

And it made me realize there was this, there's world of information and misinformation about this person out there for anyone to read.

And I didn't want that to be the lens that colored my view of this other human being.

And so I made a conscious choice to just get to know her on her own terms and to let her present herself to me.

And she would bring up things from prison or especially what I'd be like.

You've never seen Wally.

And I was like, well, when did it come out?

I was like, I was a reason you don't know who president Obama is.

President Obama was, but I wasn't there for it.

Yeah.

Or like, I think you missed the rise of Bieber.

Yeah, I totally had no idea who Justin Bieber was.

And so, you know, things would come up.

But I would engage on her terms whenever she felt like sharing something.

And I would never sort of press.

And eventually, I'm now an expert on the case.

It's hard not to be.

I realized this is a deep, important part of her life.

And it's not over in some very literal ways.

She's still on trial right now.

But I did engage.

I did read her book.

I did go through the case files.

I now know the case forwards and backwards.

And in the years since Amanda and I have done a lot of work together,

and I transitioned from writing novels, which I'm still doing.

But now also, we make podcasts together.

We've done a number of true crime podcasts.

We've done another podcast called Labyrinths.

We did for a good while.

That's recently transitioned to hard knocks, which is more about resilience and personal growth.

We actually have a new podcast coming out, true crime podcast, later this month,

with I Heart Radio called Doubt, which is about the Lucy Letby case in the UK.

So we're still working in that world.

But we keep pivoting and keep trying new things.

And one of those new things we recently tried was making a documentary.

And so I've pivoted again from noveling to podcasting to filmmaking.

And what this film is about is Amanda's return trips to Italy in order to sort of make peace with the country,

the people and with her prosecutor.

And this extraordinary journey she's gone on to try to build a bridge across a seemingly impossible divide

and to extend compassion to the person who least deserves her compassion.

And I just thought it was an incredible thing for her to attempt.

And it was a fraught journey.

And I started filming it, not even really knowing what we were doing or what we were making.

And in the process, we kind of discovered what this film was.

And I think if you watch it, you'll see that one of the things that was really important to me in the beginning was

to just introduce the woman that I had fallen in love with.

This is very much a film through my eyes.

We realized through the making of this that like, I'm not an objective documentarian here.

This is my wife.

Yeah, this is something I pointed out to him very early on as I was like, look,

this is a lot of really intimate footage.

And the reason why you have all of this intimate footage is because you're my freaking husband.

Like you can just follow me around the house in ways that like people, other people can't.

Oh, you're having a panic attack.

Let's whip out the camera.

Yeah, it's like, great.

Thanks, husband.

And there's a balance there of like, how do I be a supportive partner and also document, right?

And sometimes those things are in our intention with each other.

But as you see in the beginning of the film, like the case, the history, Italy, all of that,

that wasn't my entry point into who Amanda was.

And I didn't want that to be the entry point for an audience either.

And so it was important to kind of introduce who Amanda was before all of this,

which was a very silly person, a joyous, fun-loving person, a goofy person,

a singer, a musical person.

This is a deep part of who Amanda has always been.

She did musical theater and choir before she went to college.

And then to introduce our relationship and how we fell in love and what our dynamic together is like.

And only then do we go back and say, okay, yes, this is my life partner.

This is our world.

This is who she was as a child.

But also there's this big cloud hanging over her that has never really gone away.

And she is determined to figure out how to address that.

And that's the journey that the film takes us on.

And there's a lot more to say.

Maybe it's worth you hearing what your reactions are.

Questions, but yeah.

Well, thank you for that introduction, because I think it's always really helpful to know

where someone's coming from and the journey rather than just the very worst thing that has happened to someone.

And so taking us back, Christopher, just in terms of your intro,

but also in terms of the documentary, I think is so important.

And the humanity element to it, the fact that you didn't Google Amanda.

You met organically and you had some knowledge of who she was.

But you wanted to find out who she was as a person.

That's an incredible thing to do.

That's a real gift for someone like Amanda who's been judged by what people think she is

throughout this whole journey, 17 years, what an incredible gift to Amanda.

And I was going to ask you why the documentary, but I think you've answered it.

And I have to say, I'm going to just start at the end, which the end was so beautifully crafted in what you said,

that it was a love letter to Amanda.

And you wanted people to understand who she was through your eyes.

The woman you fell in love with, you couldn't understand where all this hate came from.

I mean, it moved me to tears.

It was beautiful and very powerful to have that in there.

And you say it's biased, but who better to tell the story?

You know, the organic version, not a overproduced polished version, but it felt very raw.

And I think that that's a very important part to this because a lot of it is raw.

A lot of it is still ongoing.

It's not over.

And I think that's such an important thing for people to understand.

Bravo.

That's not an easy thing for either of you to do.

But I thought it was incredibly well done and very, very powerful.

Yeah.

It's definitely not attempting to be the Netflix documentary about the case, right?

And I think that that's really just in its existence, it's kind of a commentary about the kind of products we make around these horrible things that happen to real people.

And the focus is so much on the horrible thing that happened and not the people.

And so he's really like he just by virtue of being who he is in the position that he is and having the lens that he has and the access that he has.

He's telling a very different kind of story that's still at the same time is about a horrible thing that happened.

It's just very, very personal.

And formed by it, right?

And like so much true crime is about destruction, right?

It's about the horrible crime that destroyed someone's life.

Or it's about, if it is about the aftermath, it's about getting the perpetrator, right?

It's about justice coming down on the head of the person who did the horrible thing.

Very rarely is it about rebuilding.

Is it about reconciliation, right?

And but everyone who goes through something horrible like this, whether it's, you know, in this case, Meredith's family or Amanda or Raphaela's family in this particular case, like they all have a decades long, probably lifelong journey to reckon with that horrible tragedy.

Yeah.

And it doesn't end in a week, it doesn't end in a year and doesn't end in 10 years.

Like there's, I am positive that Meredith's family are still dealing with this in very difficult ways that are different but related to how Amanda deals with it.

And so the way Amanda's chosen to deal with it is to try to understand the people who harmed her to not be content to vilify them the way they vilified her to give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't give her.

And to see their humanity, even when they've given her every reason to write them off as human beings.

I do think that one like ironic thing about true crime is that it is like implicit in people's fascination with true crime.

With true crime is a fascination with people, right?

Like something horrible happens and we're like, oh my God, how could this be humanly possible?

What kind of person would commit this crime or what kind of person would die this, you know, like how could this happen to this poor person?

Like there is this like deep interest, I think implied in people's interest in true crime cases because we're not, like true crime people are not just like

fascinated with horrible things that happen to people. Like they're interested in people, like they care about people.

And I think one of the weird things about like classic true crime is it doesn't really give us access to people the way that like Chris's documentary is attempting to do.

Like the fascination around who really is Amanda Knox and like what's her deal? What's what's her vibe? Like there's so much like commentary around that.

And despite the how many books have been written about the case and how many documentaries and how many TV dramas.

Like there are a lot of people who are still like, I just don't get it. Like I don't get her. And then it's like, well, I'm not that hard to get.

Like I'm really not. If you just like see me through us different kind of lens than you've been presented with previously.

Or if you, you know, one of the big criticisms we had with Malcolm Gladwell's book talking to strangers, which came out a few years ago.

And there's a whole chapter about Amanda's case is that he attempts to explain what went wrong with the case by looking at Amanda and trying to say there must be something special about Amanda.

She happens to be a kind of person who is innocent, but just acts guilty.

And she's sort of the inverse of a burning made off or a Hitler.

Someone who is guilty, but can convince people they're a good guy, right? Winston Churchill famously like met with or was a church or the other guy.

Somebody met with Hitler like in the early days and came back thinking, oh, he's a good dude back in the 30s, right?

And it's like, okay, or let's look at the people with agency and power in that dynamic.

Let's look at the police and the prosecutors and the media who actually made decisions that shaped the course of events.

And maybe there you can figure out why things went off the rails.

I also just thought it was really funny that in his book called talking to strangers.

He didn't bother to actually talk to me. I know.

But you know that that fascination with you becomes like, well, if you only ever view you the person through the lens of this horrible crime that happened next to you.

That I had nothing to do and that you suffered the consequences of other people getting it wrong.

That doesn't really tell you anything about who Amanda is.

And one of the big things that is documented in mouth of the wolf is Amanda finally realizing 10 years after all of getting out of prison that like that story has never been about her.

That story is about what Rudy Gide did to Meredith Kircher.

It's about what Giuliano Manini did to Amanda and Raphaela.

It's about what the media did to Amanda and Raphaela and to Meredith Kircher, frankly, they flattened both of them in different ways.

And none of that really reveals or says anything about who Amanda is as a person.

And for the first time in that long saga of events, Amanda was finally taking agency and doing something in relation to a journey of my own.

And something that didn't have to happen importantly, like no one was making her go and choose to talk to her prosecutor.

You know, like that was a choice of her own that changed the ending of that story and actually I think reveals character reveals Amanda as a person in a way that all those other events don't because those are things that happened to her.

This is something she's actually doing and I thought it was extraordinary.

Hey, lovely. If you enjoy crime analyst and you want more and you want to support my work, join the crime analyst squad on Patreon.

You'll be on the inside and hear all the news on cases as soon as it breaks as well as my two cents on cases.

Plus you'll receive an extra exclusive episode each month, 40% off on training as a ringleader or lifer.

And you can join my monthly live event with special guests as a ringleader or lifer.

And on February the 18th, you can join my ringleader and life a live event about Virginia Gifres hauntingly powerful book, Nobody's Girl.

Without Virginia, there would be no release of the Epstein files and of course we've only seen partial release.

And I have much more to say about that but you'll have to join me in the squad. Here's a sneak peek.

Someone like Gilei Maxwell of her own agency autonomy deciding that she is going to target vulnerable girls and feed them into Jeffrey Epstein.

And she got paid millions, 30 million dollars targeting girls who were vulnerable. The younger the better was the instruction.

And I wonder if you're aware of that, the younger the better because I've also seen people talking on social media saying that Epstein was not a pedophile.

And I also just want to correct that narrative that yes he was.

When you're going after 12 year olds, 13 year olds, 14 year olds, when I'm seeing pictures of him biting a child of seven's bottom, I know that that's his predilection.

The younger the better perpetrators work on access, accessibility, who they can get access to, particularly sex offenders are all about access.

Epstein couldn't access children because he's not a father. He can't legitimately put himself in a target rich environment.

But what he did was he got the girls to bring those girls to him and there were children around him.

So I know his predilection was for girls for children. And he could only get access to those who are slightly older, the runaways, the homeless, the domestic violence victims and so forth.

And Virginia really sheds light on all of that. If you've read her book, she backs up what I'm saying, the younger the better.

Go to patreon.com forward slash crime analyst. PS, I've also launched a new $3 tier for those who want to be on the inside.

So go over to patreon.com forward slash crime analyst and check that out.

Hey lovely, these days I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet.

If it's not well made in versatile, it's just not worth it to me. That's honestly why I love quints.

The fabrics feel elevated, the cuts are thoughtful and the pricing actually makes sense.

Quints makes high quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100% European linen, 100% silk and organic cotton poplin.

Lightweight cotton cashmiss sweaters are perfect for the changing seasons.

And you can't miss their seasonal colors and prints for spring. Versatile well made pieces that make getting dressed simple.

Quints works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen.

You're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores. Just quality clothing.

Everything quints makes is built to hold up season after season, the stitching, the fit, the fabrics.

These are pieces you'll reach for over and over. Quints clothing is consistently rated 4.5 to 5 stars for thousands of customers.

Real people wearing these pieces every day and actually loving them.

My quints Mongolian cashmere crew next sweater has become my go-to. It's so soft and feels so luxe.

I can wear it under smart or casual jackets or on its own.

And another great thing about it, it didn't cost what I thought quality cashmere would.

So of course, logically I bought two. I have the burgundy and the ivory and I get so many compliments for both.

Stop waiting to build the wardrobe you actually want. You don't need a closet full of options. You need pieces that work.

Right now go to quints.com slash crime analyst for free shipping and 365 day returns.

That's a four year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too.

Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quintsqunc.com slash crime analyst for free shipping and 365 day returns.

Quints.com slash crime analyst.

At DSW we ask the important questions. Like what shoes are you going to wear?

Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate VK.

The right shoes can make or break an RSVP. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price of course.

Get ready to get ready with designer shoe warehouse. That's your DSW store or DSW.com today.

And let us surprise you.

I love running on the beach. Every morning, even in the rain, it's literally my therapy.

My go to pick me up that makes me feel alive. As the Lunar New Year begins, I welcome the arrival of the year of the fire horse.

A rare pairing in the 60 year lunar cycle bringing a new intensity and energy. And I'm ready for a refreshing life.

Including amplifying my look with clean beauty from Thrive Cosmetics.

Every product is 100% vegan cruelty free and made with clean skin loving ingredients that work with your skin, not against it.

I love Thrive Cosmetics brilliant eye brightener. Upgrade your everyday eye with their waterproof eye shadow highlighter stick which brightens and opens your eyes.

It gives you a radiant look for any spring occasion and there are 32 shades to choose from and it's so easy to apply.

I also love the fact that every time you use your Fave Thrive Cosmetics product, you're doing more than enhancing your glow.

You're helping others shine with over $150 million in product and cash donations to 600 plus giving partners.

Your purchase directly fuels real impact and that's beauty with purpose.

Thrive Cosmetics gives to women experiencing domestic abuse to help survivors find strength, confidence and support as well as women who are homeless and breast cancer survivors.

You are literally lifting women up by buying and wearing incredible makeup and products.

Don't just talk about lifting women up, do it.

Amplify your spring look with Thrive Cosmetics. Go to ThriveCosmetics.com slash Analysts for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order.

That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S.com slash Analysts.

Yes, I think that's a really important distinction from the passive to the proactive.

All the things that were done to you because you were adjacent to something that then you had to react to when it was all about Rudy Guede.

I want to make that clear to my listeners as well because I agree with you, Amanda.

Even after we spoke, it was my episode 35 back in 2021.

I think it was. Please go and listen to it.

I still have people saying to me, so do you think she did it?

And I'm like, did you listen to the episode? Do you understand who I am as a crime analyst and what I do in terms of working thousands of different cases and I understand behavior?

I look at the forensics. I look at absolutely everything, not just what a prosecutor might be saying.

And I've spent a long time on real crime profile. We went back through the case.

We watched the crime scene video and looked at how they handled things.

We judge it and I judge it on the standards that we know it should be the crime scene should be processed by.

You know, you look at every element of what went on and what the media did.

And obviously being a Brit, I was seeing a lot of the British media, Pizze and various others of the Foxy Noxie and the commentary was very hard over there, but comparing it to the actual case, two totally different things.

And I think that there is always a lot of that that goes on when it's a woman and particularly when it's a woman who's attractive.

As I've always said, OJ Simpson never got this level of attention.

Most of the very diabolical serial killers and psychopaths I've worked on.

They've never got this level of attention. And that's something I do want people to think about because it is a sex bias.

People call it agenda bias, but it's actually about our sex and it's about how quick men are to judge women.

But not to judge upon their fellow man and they did everything.

Mignini and others did everything to hide the Rudy Guede of it all.

To hide him, the true killer and everything to focus on you.

And that was an epistemic imbalance, but it came from misogyny.

It came from sexism and chauvinism, which conversely amanded your compassion to see you operating from a level of compassion of wanting to confront him, wanting to have your mind.

But not wanting to go hard, affording him the humanity and the opportunity to explain himself, which he never afforded you.

And to stay with that path where I must admit, I'm with your mother.

Absolutely with your mother.

I would not be, yes, my professionalism would kick in if I had to be in that situation, but as a mother.

And you know, I saw you as a mother and that was important.

I'm sure for the documentary and for Mignini to see you as a whole human with your children as a mother to understand your heart.

But my goodness, you have a serious level of compassion there that you dug into affording him the opportunity to talk with you.

It bit share the same space with you, share the same oxygen with you.

And you know, on the other side, he came to the table.

But in my view, he still had far more to gain by coming to that table, given the awful judgments and decisions that he took.

And your mother saying he did a bad job, I think she was very generous with what she said on camera, because as a professional, that wasn't just a bad job.

That was corruption. That was seeing you saying, I know a killer when I see one and making everything fit, even though there was no evidence, not one centilla of evidence against you.

And that was his misogyny and that was his all him.

And when he says that he followed the facts and the evidence, he did not.

And I would have challenged him on that because that is absolutely not what he did.

And that's why I felt you were so generous.

I was trying to be generous in the sense that I was always trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Like if I didn't have definitive proof that he intentionally and maliciously harmed me, then I gave the benefit of the doubt.

That doesn't mean that it was Kumbaya.

And you see me in the documentary very kindly and gently, but firmly reminding him of some of the things that he said about me in the courtroom that were completely unfounded.

And you see him a little bit grapple with that.

And I have to say that like he's to this day grappling with that.

And he, I think the really important thing that I do not underestimate and I hope people don't underestimate is that he also did not have to meet with me.

He did not have to respond to anything I had said.

And sure, maybe he had a lot to gain, but in his view, he had a lot to lose because everyone in his social circle, everyone around him was yes manning him and was saying why would you ever confront, including his own wife.

Like everyone was telling him you should not meet with this person. Why would you ever do that?

And he was coming from, he was responding to my approach, which was not an aggressive approach. It was not an adversarial approach.

And so, you know, he felt like he was honor bound to respond to me, but it did come with risk to him.

And I also, in a way, was unfair to him because I put him in a position of having to respond to things that he maybe hadn't wrapped his mind around and wasn't ready to respond to you.

You know, I mean, well, no, I mean, you put you in a position.

Certainly.

Well, like you were sitting at a trial and not understanding the language and then corrupting things and not giving you any opportunity to even understand the process in a court of law.

You know, I understand what you're saying, but yeah, like it doesn't erase any of the horrible horrible.

Like obviously everything I went through was way worse than anything he's ever gone through in his entire life.

And I think one thing that was really great is Don Salo being a part of this process.

So Don Salo, you meet in the documentary in the grand scheme of how like the story has been told in the normal channels of news.

He's always been like maybe someone heard about him because he's like the prison chaplain, but like no one ever interviews him or talks about him.

Like he's not an important figure in true crime.

He's just a priest.

And yet he plays this really central role in both my life and in Juliano Manini's life and then plays a very important role in us coming together and having a conversation.

And one of the things that I love about Don Salo and his role in this is that he's very much a model for me of how you can be firm and gentle at once, how you can have integrity and hold people to account.

And at the same time do so from a non-judgmental place.

He's not a punitive person. He is an honest person. He has integrity.

He will tell you what he really thinks, but he will do so from a loving place.

And he doesn't love anybody any less or think of them as less of a human because of the mistakes or even the malicious things that they do.

He's very capable of holding conflicting emotions at once.

And that's something that I really aspire to do.

And so he was able to be there in the room with me.

And like frankly, this didn't make it into the documentary because we didn't film the first encounter.

But one of my favorite things that he did during that first encounter with Juliano was at one point Juliano was sort of like equating what I went through to what he's gone through.

And we both have suffered and Don Salah was like, Amanda went to prison.

He was just like, excuse me.

And it was just like, it was so nice that it wasn't on me to always have to say like, hey, by the way, like reality check.

Yeah, reality check. Like it put me in the position of being able to acknowledge his suffering and his humanity and his process and not have to feel defensive or have to like compare just to stand up for myself.

I wasn't the only one standing up for myself in that room and that felt that was a huge relief for me.

And also like a huge message for anyone out there who wants to support somebody who's been victimized by another person and is attempting to reestablish themselves in the world.

The burden of a victim or someone who's been accused to have to explain themselves or stand up for themselves is enormous.

And so anyone who is willing to like be the person who just does the dirty work of explaining things to people, like bless you, Laura, for explaining things to people so that I don't have to all the time.

Like thank you for that. That's one of those like blessings of the true crime genre is that there are people who are better equipped to explain frankly than me.

What is really going on in a crime scene and how should we interpret what's going on here? Because I did not grow up with a criminology degree.

I'm not a forensics person. I'm just a bird. I'm a poetry kid. I'm a Harry Potter fantasy reader, you know, like that's my world.

Thank you, Laura. It's really what this all comes down to.

Oh, well, I appreciate that. And, you know, I have to say Don Salo, just what an incredible human being.

He just struck me as just and I'm so glad you included him in the documentary because having seen the role he played for you in the scripted show.

He was someone who I was very intrigued about and wanted to hear much more from him because the way he could harness and help your soul through your hardest time, the dark night of the soul that went on and on and on for you.

And through music, he found connection with you. And I just thought what a incredibly gifted and connected and beautiful soul that he has.

And I had no idea about the role that he was in the local parish with Mignini. I mean, my good, that was just mind blowing for me, seeing that play out of hang on a minute.

He offers counsel to both. I mean, how, how can that be possible? And it is always possible to hold two things in your head sometimes three, four, five at the same time with the right person.

You can navigate others through the trickiest of situations. And that's what he did. He had no invested interest himself.

His mission was to get you both to a better place. That takes a very special person to not put their self, their energy into it, to muddy the waters and to try and achieve that for you.

Look, you were hell bent on going there and your mom and everyone's saying, and Christopher's doing the Rubik's cube and it's, you know, why would you do this and he's completed this Rubik's cube whilst talking to camera, which is staggering in itself.

But, you know, you could hold space for a man to go, but everybody else is like, why would you go back? But you still were hell bent on doing that. And he was the safe person to get you through it and to be that advocate.

And everyone needs an advocate, everybody. And that's what I've spent my career really doing, listening to victims, whichever side and trying to get people to a better place and space.

It's not easy, but in those moments, of course, you needed someone to say, hello, reality check. No, you're suffering, my friend, you know, in a gentle way is nothing compared to what you actively put Amanda through.

Let's remember, it's a proactive process that he didn't have to do these things and you did challenge him. And I thought you did a very good job.

But I did want to ask you just about the very first meeting, like when you laid eyes on him, because you explained to camera, which I think was the right thing.

You wanted it to be an authentic meeting. You didn't want the camera to change the dynamic for something that was so important. Yes.

You know, you don't get a second chance at that. And your meeting was not for the camera. It wasn't to create a difficult situation.

It was for your heart to genuinely meet with, to not know where you might end up. But to owe him, you did it really for him too, so that he could just be authentic in who he was.

So when the cameras went off, can you just tell me what was it like seeing him for the first time of him even coming into the room and being in your space?

Like there must have been a physiological reaction. Or can you just tell me about that moment?

Yeah. And you know what? My first chance at expressing all of this was, I mean, I wrote about it in my book.

But like what I was really interested to see how it would work out was when I wrote the, I co-wrote the final episode of the twisted tale of Amanda Knox.

So that's when that meeting takes place. And I am so thankful for Grace Van Patten because she really devoted herself to like figuring out this role and portraying me the way that it really was.

And it was such a challenging thing for her to do because half the time she's speaking in Italian, in which she doesn't speak in real life.

And so just imagine like the pressure it is to like figure a person out and do it in a foreign language. So bless her.

And like it really was very similar to the way that I portrayed it in that episode where I was very, very nervous going into this meeting.

I was afraid to be in a room with him. I was afraid because all I had ever known of him was in the courtroom or in the police office where I'm being tortured basically like I'm just going through this hellish experience.

He is this nightmarish figure in my life.

Let me just interject for a second like it's, it's beyond that though because there's also just legitimate real risk.

And this is something you brought up the risks for Manini in coming to this table like yeah, he has some social risks.

He might lose some friends maybe who and he did you lost friends over.

Yeah. But for you in the lead up to this journey, your stepdad was convinced that this was a ploy that Manini was luring you back that he was going to attempt to slap you with some other bullshit charges.

And a lot of people don't know the history of all the minor charges around this case, but Amanda remains wrongly convicted today of slander for the statements that she was coerced into signing during her brutal 53 hours of interrogation.

And her own mother and father were charged with criminal slander just for repeating to the press what Amanda had told them about how she was slapped during her interrogation right so like they charged Amanda's mom with a crime for telling a reporter that her daughter was slapped so like it wasn't beyond them to do that.

And so the idea that Amanda might go back to Italy and just say something that could result in another criminal charge and arrest like that's not an unrealistic fear.

And so walking into that room, it's not just that you can use against you and use to imprison you like I was there to exchange some words.

And that had not like I spent and like Amanda's mom didn't want to see Manini ever again, you know, and so she's staying outside of the building and she's sitting on a bench.

And it's legitimately having a panic attack when she hears sirens in the distance because she thinks, oh no, he's called them in.

Yeah, like so that's a that's a legitimate fear that this that he's not being honest with her.

So, you know, slime is not great.

Hey, slime is not great.

On top of that, there's just the trauma of being next to this person who has destroyed your life.

But what actually what is really cool about what happened is the first person who walked into the room wasn't Juliano.

It was Don Salo.

And I didn't even like in the anticipation leading up to like confronting Juliano.

I was like preparing myself and putting up all my walls or you know, like trying, you know, how do I keep an open heart while still containing myself and keeping myself together.

I had all of that and then Don Salo walks into the room and like I hadn't seen him since prison and I just lost it.

I like I was not I hadn't in no way prepared myself for the emotional overwhelm of seeing my best friend in prison again that I didn't know if I was ever going to see him again.

And just like being in the room with him like I just lost it.

We I just like collapsed into him.

We were hugging and crying and then all while I'm like hugging a crying Don Salo with on Salo Juliano walks into the room.

And he's not in his like you know, like his uniform of that like robes and all of that.

He's just wearing this like fishing vest.

He just looks like somebody's grandpa because of course he is just somebody's grandpa.

And that was you know, and he's brought a gift for Eureka.

And Eureka's there.

I'm daughter Eureka.

And Eureka and she's like one how old is she?

She's yeah, she's one and something.

Yeah, she's about no, she's like not even one.

No, wait, so this was in yeah, yeah, almost like almost one.

She's like 11 months old.

And so actually that awkward moment of like small talk before the dialogue began.

It was really mediated by Eureka in a strange way because I brought Eureka forward.

And he said hello and he offered her this little toy.

And it's just so bizarre.

He looked at her and Amanda looked at her and that was kind of this pure innocent,

blameless child that came from Amanda.

That was the like the focus point.

Yeah, like we're both sort of focusing on her.

And that was a way for me to sort of like see him.

And it was just bizarre.

It was bizarre seeing him be so affectionate and gentle towards her after what he had done to me.

I think one of the first things he said to you was like you have butterflies.

Yeah, he noticed I was very visibly like shaken and he was like hey,

you can tell your butterflies to calm down.

I'm not going to do anything.

And I was just like and so really it was like all of these sort of intermediaries sort of helping diffuse a lot of like my deep now ingrained

instinctual fear response of this person.

And then Don Saulo very gracefully sort of conducted the opening ceremony of it all like he was just like okay,

you can sit here Amanda will sit here.

He sat next to me put his hand on the back and he sat next.

He was sitting next to Juliano at the table and then as they were like getting ready to like really have the conversation.

He stood up and moved to the other side of the table sat next to Amanda.

Which is a sort of like ingest of like I know where my support is needed.

But yeah, I was in the room adjacent with the door open with Eureka sort of like my Italian is not great.

But I've been studying a lot and so I'm like picking up maybe a third to half of what they're saying.

But Amanda is also crying half the time.

Yeah, I was you know it was a very tense conversation that went for like two hours.

They're talking at this table.

Yeah.

And a lot of the time just like tears down Amanda's face because she was not holding back on telling him all the ways that he had harmed her.

But the big thing was that she wasn't there to say you harmed me that's it.

She was there to say you harmed me and I want you to know it.

And I want you to know that I know it.

But I also want you to know that I don't hate you for it and that I don't think you're a bad person because of that.

I don't think that's all you are.

I think that everyone is more than the worst thing they've ever done.

And I want to know who you really are and that's why I'm here.

And I have never seen her as like broken down and crying as she was in that moment.

Like I've never seen her more powerful than she was in that moment.

And then I left that whole experience feeling utterly shell shocked.

I'm just like you see it in the documentary.

I'm just like what just happened.

So yeah, it was it was tense, but it was also really heartfelt.

He was surprisingly affectionate and you know given our history, but surprisingly affectionate,

not just towards Eureka, but towards me.

And that I think you see even more in the second encounter, which we were able to film,

where there's we're not sitting across from each other like in an interrogation room.

Like we are next to each other.

He's holding my hand.

There's clearly a connection and there is a sense of trust that has been built over years of communicating and speaking openly,

but gently with each other.

So and again, that would not have happened if it was just me doing my side.

It does take two to get to that place.

But I'm going to play the Don Salo role here and just remind everyone that like it's not like you met in the middle.

Like for this to happen, Amanda had to go 90% of the way there.

And the risks for you were much bigger than the risks for him.

And you know, he wasn't fearing going to prison by meeting with you.

Sure.

You know, and the amount of emotional labor that he had to do to talk to you is not the same as what you had to do to talk to him.

And so like I don't think I like comparing.

Well, I know.

And you and in that moment, it's not worth comparing.

You know, like it's good to have Don Salo be the one to say Amanda went to prison.

But like I think one of the lessons from this is that there are great things to be gained if you are willing to go that extra mile and give someone the benefit of the doubt that they haven't earned.

And what Amanda like realized in that moment was that if you treat someone the way you would think they deserve to be treated based on their actions, like they'll fulfill that.

If you walk up to a person and treat them as an adversary, they'll react like.

Well, yes.

But if you give them an image to like grow into, if you give them, if you treat them like the person you hope they could be, then they might take some steps towards that ideal, even if they never actually get there.

And that's what I think we've seen Juliano do in this film and continuing to present day is like he is a growing and evolving human.

He's not static and like he has not stepped into the fullness of who he could be right now.

He's not out there from the rooftops proclaiming his deep sorrow and asking forgiveness and telling everyone how wrong he was.

But he has changed and he has admitted things on camera that are startling.

And we do have to give him credit for that for that growth.

I'll agree with most of what you've said, but if you have a psychopath or a malignant narcissist, that would not work.

And that's where I was going to say, yeah, let's.

Well, and I think to bring back to Rudy Gide for a second, like I think it's notable Amanda is not attempting a dialogue with Rudy Gide.

And I think a big reason why is that we have good reason to believe that Rudy is a psychopath and that it's not possible for him to grow in the way.

Manini, we think was a poorly trained guy who was badly incentivized and who had ego and other things affecting his decision making cognitive bias.

All these other things led him to make some really catastrophic decisions and selfishness and all this other stuff, but not psychopathy and in our judgment.

With Mignini, I wasn't sure to be fair. I was on the fence because some of the things that he said, like I know a killer when I see one and just this grandiose delusions of his own worth and his own abilities.

Bearing in mind, he wasn't a criminal psychologist who worked many crimes.

He had no credentials, no expertise, but you've got group think you've got a team of police officers who clearly wanted to implicate you.

And then you've got a perfect storm of a very biased misogynistic prosecutor who's going wants to be a Sherlock Holmes, basically.

That's what I saw. He was trying he was overextending in so many areas.

And then you've got the science of it all which a lab that's not certified all of those things you've got a perfect storm going on.

And a culture like don't forget just the Italian culture in general is already has a bunch of misogynist ideas deeply embedded in it.

And not a lot of pride in a Catholic culture, you know, that Madonna horror dichotomy is like deep, deep in the psyche over there.

And I think that it's not an accident to that Meredith got elevated to this original figure and Amanda got turned into the ultimate slut.

And both of them were actually two young college girls who were pretty similar in their behaviors around that time.

So it's a perfect storm in so many ways.

And I think, you know, I mean, I know a bit about the Italian system. I've worked with the Italian police,

but I have to say one revelation for me from the twisted tale, the scripted show.

And I do want to ask you a couple of questions about that.

But it was the revelation that all of the charges, whether they were civil or criminal, were heard together at the same time by the same judge and the same jury.

And that just blew my mind.

How could that ever be possible?

And I think that the twisted tale of a man and not really did that well of explaining some of these legalities and processes that you wouldn't get from anywhere else of, you know, the voiceover just to help the viewer understand.

But as soon as I heard that, you never stood a chance.

I mean, there was, you've got all the cultural issues, but you, you would never stand a chance of if something's inadmissible like your statements from a corrupted police interrogation that they never recorded.

And the judge rules, okay, inadmissible on the criminal charges, but can be heard on the civil charges.

I mean, the jury can't unheir what they've heard.

And therefore, the whole process was corrupted.

That just blew my mind. And, you know, the juxtaposition of you are 20-year-old.

So naive, not being explained, you know, the whole process, not having a grasp of the language.

You know, for anyone even who had the language, legalese is totally different.

You might have a conversation in Italian, but understanding the legalities of it and not being your best advocate.

I mean, who is as a 20-year-old normally in a normal situation?

But when you're in a legal situation, with these anomalies that you could speak at any time, and the judge not being a judge, not being impartial, I just felt that that was done very well to just show these idiosyncrasies of the Italian processes.

And the judiciary, and just how corrupt the whole thing was, that you never stood a chance.

And that was, it was so hard to sit and watch and understand what you were facing.

And then, obviously, when it comes to the appeal, you take charge of your case.

And you learn Italian, you get into everything of your, and there you are standing in your own power, because you have to.

You have no other choice, but I just think that position you were in and with the media are already framing you.

You never stood a chance. You really didn't.

Newsflash. I know many of you want deep-onologian insights about criminal behavioural analysis and profiling and descalating risk.

I've worked so many cases, and I can tell you that the murders never come out of the blue.

Nor do abusers when they target us. There are always warning signs. You need to know them.

Often it's the non-physical behaviour that's missed. Let me decodify it further for you.

University accredited domestic abuse, stalking the harassment and so-called honour-based abuse, dash for short,

risk identification assessment and management model training is on March 11th and 12th, two and a half hours on each day.

All my masterclasses are virtual, so you can join from anywhere, and they're two and a half hours long.

Listen to the cases, learn the patterns of behaviour that repeat. This is life-changing and life-saving information.

I really want to get out there. Sign up now. The link is in the show notes.

Your little one grew three inches overnight. Adorable. Also expensive.

Sell their pint-sized pieces on Deepop, and list them in minutes with no selling fees.

Because somewhere, a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kid will outgrow tomorrow.

And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growthspurt budget secured.

Start selling on Deepop, where taste recognises taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details.

This is your fix.

I am your host, Stassie Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast.

What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven, because he's so evil.

I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone base consequences. It's intoxicating.

The writers just know how to trick you. There's always a twist in this show.

Tell Me Lies, the official podcast January 6th, and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies January 13th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I feel like looking back given just how much was stacked against me.

I'm honestly amazed that I only spent four years in prison.

And I will say that it's to the Italian Justice Systems credit that it was possible for me to appeal.

And to appeal not just based on nebulous grounds, but on the fact that like every single verdict in Italy is motivated.

They have to be explained. It has to be explained what evidence was convincing to the jury and what wasn't.

And so it has to be like really meticulously shown what they think is the truth.

And if that truth isn't rational, or doesn't make sense, or if a testimony comes back unreliable,

it's very easy to say, well, if the whole case was built on that, then we need to be able to appeal it based.

And I think that's one thing that I learned to appreciate about the Italian system is that we don't treat,

or they don't treat verdicts like sacred little black boxes.

They have to be explained. Whereas like here in the US, they're just, it's just a verdict.

And who knows how they came to that verdict. There no one has to explain themselves, which makes the whole.

And then appeal course are never guaranteed. And you're often fighting to get an appeal less an innocent person in prison.

But you're right. Procedural difficulties in just even having your case heard again.

Unless you're Alec Murdoch. Unless you're a killer with deep pockets, right? Let's make a distinction.

Because they have a whole set of rules that apply only to them.

But how about the judge allowed the defense team to a half the DNA and forensics report at the right time

and be allowed an independent set of experts? How about if that had happened, you wouldn't need the appeal?

And for me, it is about justice and the search for truth and fairness.

And that judge did not allow any level of fairness was clearly biased throughout the whole process.

And I just wonder how much time and money is spent on these appeals.

Oh, my God.

You know, they said 90% of them are reversed through appeal.

Well, how about getting it right the first time round?

Yeah. And you're right. Like it was astonishing for me to read in the initial motivation document explaining why the court found me guilty and decided not to have an independent review of the end of evidence.

Is they were like, well, we've listened to both sides of the experts and we feel like we're equipped as a layperson judge to be able to decide which expert is telling the truth or not.

And it's just like, why are you kidding me?

How would you know? Like I feel like it was a long trial, like a year long trial.

And I think people were just like tired of it.

And so they were just like, I don't want to listen to yet more experts.

I just want this to be over with. I have a gut feeling about what I think if they're guilty or not.

I can't really explain it, but it's good enough. Like that's what I think ultimately happened, which I think is a really important point about justice systems.

Is like they are these institutional like frameworks that we use and there are rules and laws and all of that, but ultimately it all rests on human frailty.

And our ability to like have the attention and humility that we need in order to interpret facts as they are presented to us.

And it's also just shaped by things as simple as friendships and collegiality.

And this is one of the, I don't know if this is true in the UK, but in the US, the vast majority of judges come through a prosecutor pipeline, the sort of career path to become a judge is to be a prosecutor first.

And so that's not good. I mean, just think about that. If most judges have previously been prosecutors, you don't think that's going to bias them in terms of how they're going to rule defense first prosecution.

Prosecutors end up being cozy with police officers because they end up working together. Right. And so police officers are witnesses and trials. And it's like, well, yeah, this is your friend. You know this person, you have been to their barbecue.

You know, like, of course, that's going to affect your judgment here.

And that's something I tried to show in in the twisted tale as well, where it was like, I had two defense attorneys, one of whom was from Rome, one of whom was from perucia.

And in many ways, like my attorney from Rome kept like coming into cultural conflict with the local attorneys who all knew each other and like perucia is a small town.

Like everybody knows each other. And if you're an outsider, you're an outsider, even if you're just attorney from the country, you know, it's, it's the country.

And Luciano, Luciano Guierga, her attorney from perucia, like he is known Juliano Manini for like, yeah, four years or whatever.

And Carlo from Rome, like, he's the big city attorney who is coming into their country town and, you know, saying he knows the law better.

Right. And it doesn't go over well. But, you know, one of the reforms we've been wanting here in the US for a long time is that one have like equal funding between defense public defenders and prosecutors offices.

But to also have some kind of situation where the pipeline of going to become a judge is equal, like maybe even have a statute that says you need to have spent equal amount of time, you know, working on both sides.

And some people do that. I mean, we know a guy who runs the Ohio Innocence Project now who is a former prosecutor and he spent a long time as a prosecutor before switching teams.

And I think having experience on both sides of that is really crucial for someone who wants to be a judge. And all too often those people have only spent time putting people away as prosecutors. And that equips them to be very harsh judges and not very fair judges.

Hey, lovely, a quick 30 seconds of your time, please. Firstly, thank you for tuning in and listening to the show week after week. It means the absolute world to me.

And secondly, it feels like I'm only just getting started. And if you enjoy what I do here, please join the small percentage of people who listen regularly and follow crime analysts on this app.

My commitment to you is that I'm going to do everything I can to make this show as good as I can for you.

I'll cover the cases you want me to and share expert insight and knowledge and do all the things you love about the show. Thank you so much.

Yeah, so I think that network is a very important point. I mean, it's the same all over, you know, you don't know who's networked to whom and who owes whom and what deals are done before you even get into the courtroom.

And they're meant to declare conflicts of interest and so forth, but we know a lot of cases where that doesn't happen. So I think they're very good points. And I just want to hold up the other part to it, which is really great.

Really great. It got the speedy trial. He got things you talked about yours being a year long. He is he avoided any form of media glare when it all should have been on him.

So it just shows how the system again works so differently for those that maybe they, you know, they want to hide or they have a priority, whatever it might be, a positive bias to.

But the sole focus should have been on really grey day. And just for my listeners, you know, Meredith is an incredibly important part of the case and talking about Amanda doesn't mean to say we don't respect what happened to Meredith.

But that was not anything to do with Amanda and we can hold those two things together that, you know, I know that the scripted show received particularly from a BBC article, a scathing review.

And I do just want to make mention of it because Laura Martin, who was the person who wrote it, she started the article with Meredith Kurches' sister Stephanie saying, you know, my family's been through enough what purpose would this serve to do a scripted show like this.

And I think we've answered the question what purpose, but interestingly at the end of the article having really trounced a series, which is a very important narrative to what happened the truth of what happened your truth, which is important, you are a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

At the end, she wrote, oh, well, I asked Amanda Knox about why she did this scripted show and she said, because I wanted the real killer to be identified.

And she ended the article with, oh, I guess she's got a point. And I just, it blew my mind. I guess she's got a point.

Well, the point is that a whole entire false narrative was created and that harmed Meredith's family. It revictimized them and it put them through an ordeal that needn't have happened.

They could have stopped with the speedy trial, getting it through quickly, making sure that he received the right sentence and sparing them of the ordeal that Mignini put them through as well as you and Raphaelie, the two of you.

So I do just want to make that clear because even present day that was on a recent article that was, you know, again written by a woman and I'm always disappointed when women write this kind of shit because they should be able to be much more independent to understand why it's important to correct the narrative and correct the facts of what happened.

And really this Meredith, I always take a deep breath because I feel she did get lost in all of it and you've tried to correct that you tried to correct that in the scripted show, which I thought was well done.

And her family obviously still feel very aggrieved and that was all down to Mignini. But really if I had been profiling this crime scene, it would have been very clear what went on.

And the forensics would have painted another picture that this was a sexually motivated homicide and the glass and everything that the burglary and so on.

If you do the forensics and with experience, the forensics would have confirmed really great days DNA all over that crime scene and in Meredith Kertcher and it was a brutal crime.

And your DNA and your forensics were not in the crime scene, but were of course in your house quite rightly because you lived there.

And really it was sadly quite a, you know, I never want to say a normal sexual homicide because there's nothing normal about this.

But in terms of in my line of work, it was really a sexual homicide that was clear from the outset.

So to create a satanic orgy or ritual when there was no paraphernalia to suggest that the crime scene is so egregious to me because professionally it does matter, you know, that a professional is professional in these situations.

And if they don't have the knowledge, they call in the people who do have the knowledge to help and therefore none of this would have happened.

And I think your humanity is incredible and you had to soul search in a way none of us have ever had to do.

And I do just want to make that point. I found it episode six of the scripted show just agonizing to watch. I was in tears, particularly the scene between you and your father.

Yeah, it was agonizing, which really happened. And I was going to ask you about that because it felt so raw and grace played the part of you so well, but let's not forget she's playing a part of you who lived it.

And you crying don't leave me daddy. I felt it viscerally as a mother and as a professional that you were put in that place you had to go into the depths of despair.

And you've made the best of all of that Amanda and I think you are an incredible human to be so magnanimous to Magnini and people who you know friends who betrayed you just things that were just unfathomable to you at the time.

And what an incredible human being you are now as a mother your children are very lucky to have you as a mother and you Christopher as a father.

And the good energy you're putting out into the world where you might have chosen a different pathway. And I do believe the Chaplin don't sound played a tremendous role in that.

And I could understand his grandfather warmth to you of he was there in your deepest darkest hours and knew you your humanity your soul knew the true when everything else is stripped away.

He saw you. And he probably saved your life. I might be taking it step too far, but I think he held.

No, no, I think you're right. He held you when you needed to be held.

And not just that. He like gave you something that helped you find a way to rebuild your life and reclaim agency.

You know, he set that model for her. And you know, I think that to bring it back to Meredith for a moment, one of the best ways to serve the memory of Meredith culture is for the truth to be known.

Hey, lovely. I'm jumping in here. Yes, at this critical point to rap part one, but I do just want to say this is such an important point here.

You see, it was Mignini and his team that decided to zero in on Amanda and Raphaelie, but more importantly, Amanda in the knowledge because the forensics came back relatively quickly that they had compelling DNA that they had semen from the crime scene and from inside of Meredith culture, which made it clear that this was a sexual homicide.

It was the most powerful form of evidence and that DNA match with Rudy Guaday, Rudy Guaday, who had already been convicted for burglaries and was known for burglary and also for violence against women.

And what Mignini decided to do was to go down a fast track route, a speedy trial route.

And it meant that Rudy Guaday was invisible and he was shielded from media scrutiny. So people didn't see his face, didn't know that he was the suspect and he continued his pursuit of Amanda.

And therefore Rudy Guaday never had the media scrutiny that Amanda got and the media were all funneled down the route of focusing on Amanda and that is on Mignini.

And it's a really important point because Amanda then became the story and due to that, Meredith became a footnote in her own murder.

So we have to focus on who made that happen and it was Mignini feeding information, inaccurate information to Nick Pisa, who worked for the Daily Mail at the time.

So it's very important. These two men framed Amanda Knox and everybody ate it up because of the misogyny and hatred to women.

And that's not justice. That's not justice for Meredith. That's not fair on her or her family. And it's certainly not fair on Amanda and Raphaelie and their families.

And we can hold those two thoughts in our head around injustice at the same time and we should be laser focused on who created that situation.

And it's men. Mignini Rudy Guaday as the offender and Nick Pisa, who led the charge in terms of the media and he didn't fact check.

Also, you're going to hear in part two revelation from me and my thoughts about Mignini. I think you're probably starting to understand how I might feel.

But I explain why what Mignini did was so dangerous and still is so for women. And Amanda also shares an update in the slander case.

Now, this might seem like a sidebar to the whole case, but it's actually really important.

There's a critical point that you really need to understand with this new appeal and it is presidential.

So until next time, be curious, ask questions and always trust your instincts.

Here's my final thought and ask before the episode wraps.

I really appreciate you listening to Crime Analyst and if you like what I do, please take two minutes to leave a five star review wherever you listen to me.

It really helps others find me and my work and it helps with the ratings too.

Crime Analyst is written, produced and hosted by me, Laura Richards, sound engineering by Jason Sheesley at a bridged audio and music by Killrude.

This episode is brought to you by Greenlight. You can't solve every case for your kids, but with Greenlight, they'll have the instincts and money skills to stay out of trouble.

With a Greenlight debit card and money app, parents can monitor spending and teach financial responsibility.

Educate your kids as they grow, from earning allowance and tracking chores, to learning how to save and invest.

Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash Spotify.