Amanda Knox Still Feels 'Haunted' by Spirit of Slain Roommate Meredith Kercher — but in a 'Benevolent' Way (Exclusive)

03/19/2025 08:00 AM

In a new memoir, Amanda Knox details life after being wrongly convicted of murder and why she'll always cherish the memory of her friend

When Amanda Knox was acquitted in 2011 of the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher after spending four years in an Italian prison cell, she wanted nothing more than to return to her previous life as an anonymous student in Seattle.

Once she returned, she discovered that would never happen.

"Not just because of paparazzi stalking me or my receiving endless death threats," Knox, now 37, tells PEOPLE exclusively of how difficult it was to reintegrate into society after the horrifying experience. "But I had changed. I was now the girl accused of murder. For better or for worse, that was forever my legacy." 

Now, in Free: My Search for Meaning (out March 25), Knox tells the story of life after prison and her ongoing fight to prove her innocence of the horrifying murder of Kercher, a British college student who was found sexually assaulted with her throat slit at the apartment she shared with Knox.

Knox and her then-Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of murder after a sensational trial in which they were portrayed as sexual deviants who killed Kercher in a sex game gone wrong. They'd signed coerced confessions that they retracted, and DNA later proved that a drifter named Rudy Guede was the sole murderer of Kercher.

Related: Man Who Killed Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox's Roommate in Italy, Is Freed from Prison 

Still, despite being declared innocent and freed, Knox says she was never allowed to fully live her life again. Her wedding to husband Chris Robinson was a paparazzi feeding frenzy, and the death threats persisted.

"There's always this subtext, like 'Look at Amanda living her life while Meredith is dead,'" she says. "Any expression of life in my life is seen as an offense to the memory of my friend who got murdered." 

When she got pregnant with daughter Eureka, 3, she panicked that her reputation would destroy her child: "I did not want the first instance of my daughter's existence into this world be a headline like, 'Amanda gives birth to daughter... You know who will never get to have a daughter? Meredith.'"

Related: A Brief Guide to the Amanda Knox Legal Saga

She adds, "It didn't feel fair for my daughter's existence to be living in the shadow of the worst thing that ever happened to me," she says.

She adds that when she got pregnant, she received messages like, "I hope your daughter dies so that you know what Meredith's mom went through."

Still, she says she understands where the anger is coming from.

"I understand why in some people's minds, Meredith's death is associated with my identity," she says.

"So many people only ever heard about her through that context. And so in their mind, my existence and her death are married to one. I don't necessarily think that that's a crazy thought, because I've had it, in how I am experiencing survivor's guilt and how I've come to process Meredith's death in terms of my life."

Knox says that time, love and being a criminal justice advocate have helped heal her.

"I think I have a more healthy relationship with the reality that in 2007, two young girls went to study abroad in Perugia, Italy, and one of them got to go home. Fate flipped a coin, and one of us survived the experience. I'm incredibly grateful and lucky to have survived," she says.

She continues, "For that reason, I've described it as feeling haunted by Meredith, but not in that bad way that people sort of project onto me. More in this benevolent spirit who is reminding me of the value of life, the privilege it is to live and the privilege it is to fight for your life. Because she fought for hers."