‘I am not Foxy Knoxy, I am Amanda Knox and I have not slandered or killed’: Knox lashes out at ‘fantasy’ idea of who she truly is and says she and Meredith Kercher ‘are all victims’ in new TV interview

Amanda Knox has hit out at the decision of a Florence court to convict her of slander for wrongly accusing an innocent man of the murder of Meredith Kercher in a dramatic new interview with Italian TV.

Slamming critics for painting a ‘fantasy’ picture of who she really is, Knox, 36, claimed she was a victim and railed against the ‘impulse to find satisfaction or fun in judging other people’. 

US citizen Knox was a 20-year-old exchange student in the university town of Perugia when she and her then-boyfriend were accused of murdering 21-year-old Brit Kercher, who was found dead in the apartment they shared on November 2, 2007.

After years of flip-flop trials and jail time they were exonerated in 2015, but a slander conviction endured against Knox for wrongly accusing an innocent man, the Congolese bar owner who employed her part time. 

The European Court of Human Rights in 2019 ruled that police officers violated her human rights during an intensive interrogation in which she named the bar owner as the killer, but the judge in Florence nevertheless saw it fit to reconvict her this week. 

‘I’m not Foxy Knoxy, I’m Amanda Knox and I have not slandered, I have not killed,’ she declared through tears in an exclusive interview with Sky TG24 in Italy. 

Amanda Knox has hit out at the decision of a Florence court to convict her of slander for wrongly accusing an innocent man of the murder of Meredith Kercher in a dramatic new interview with Italian TV

Slamming critics for painting a ‘fantasy’ picture of who she really is, Knox, 36, claimed she was a victim and railed against the ‘impulse to find satisfaction or fun in judging other people’

Meredith Kercher (pictured) was tragically murdered in 2007 

Amanda Knox arrives flanked by her husband Christopher Robinson, right, at the Florence courtroom in Florence, Italy, Wednesday, June 5, 2024

Knox initially accused the Congolese owner of a bar, Patrick Lumumba, (pictured) of killing Kercher  

FILE – Amanda Knox, center, is escorted by Italian penitentiary police officers to Perugia’s court, in Italy, Sept 26, 2008

Knox served four years in prison before being freed on an earlier acquittal in 2011, covering the three-year slander sentence.

Rudy Hermann Guede of Ivory Coast was later convicted of killing Kercher and served 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

But Knox, from Seattle, was on hand in the Florence court on Wednesday when she was reconvicted of slandering Patrick Lumumba, who was held for two weeks on suspicion of murder before police released him with an iron-clad alibi.

Italy’s highest court ordered the retrial after a European Court of Human Rights ruling that her human rights had been violated during a long night of questioning without a lawyer or competent translator, when she accused Lumumba in two statements typed by police that she signed.

The high court stipulated that the Florence appeals panel could not consider the two signed documents, but only four handwritten pages penned by Knox the next afternoon in a bid to walk back the statements.

‘There is one document in question, that we can all read, and the message of this document is, ”I don’t know who killed Meredith”. I thought I was extremely clear,’ Knox said in fluent Italian.

‘I didn’t slander Patrick; I didn’t kill my friend [Meredith]. I will come back here as many times as I have to fight against this injustice’. 

She went on to insist that she named Lumumba under extreme police pressure.

‘I was abused, mistreated, psychologically tortured by police that night,’ Knox said in the TV interview. 

‘It was the worst experience of my life. It was worse than being convicted, to tell the truth, because they made me think I was crazy, that I couldn’t trust myself.

‘I will fight for the truth,’ Knox told Sky TG24 in her first public comments since the guilty verdict on Wednesday. 

‘It’s been 17 years that I have been unjustly accused.’ 

Amanda Knox (pictured) returned to an Italian courtroom Wednesday for the first time in more than twelve-and-a-half years to clear her name 

Kercher was travelling in Italy at the time of her death 

FILE – Diya ‘Patrick’ Lumumba, a Congolese citizen who was originally jailed for the murder of Meredith Kercher, leaves the court building on the occasion of the final hearing before the third court verdict for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, in Florence, Italy, Jan. 30, 2014

Amanda Knox and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito (pictured, right) were pictured in June 2022 reuniting in Italy 15 years after they were arrested and wrongly convicted of the murder of Briton Meredith Kercher

Knox pictured leaving with penitentiary police after a court hearing in Perugia on September 16, 2008

Ivory Coast man Rudy Guede, 36, (pictured in 2016) was released from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years for brutally killing Meredith – although he always denied any involvement

Lumumba, speaking to MailOnline this week, said he was felt the Florence court’s decision was ‘just and deserved’.

‘I hail the court in Florence with much respect and honor for their professionalism. It is true we were friends with Amanda Knox, but you don’t stab friends in the back and Amanda stabbed me. She stabbed me and did not apologize,’ he continued. 

The slaying of Kercher in 2007 fuelled global headlines as suspicion fell on Knox, then a 20-year-old exchange student, and her new Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito.

The young Brit’s body was found splayed out in her bedroom, partially undressed, and had suffered 47 stab wounds.

In the statements given to police during an intensive questioning in the early hours of the morning in 2007, Knox said she remembered hearing Kercher scream, and pointed to Lumumba for the killing.

Hours later at 1pm, she asked for pen and paper and wrote her own statement in English, questioning the Italian version typed up by police that she had signed in the night.

‘In regards to this ”confession” that I made last night, I want to make clear that I´m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,’ she wrote.

But despite Knox’s attempts at walking back the accusation, Lumumba was picked up for questioning and held in jail for almost two weeks.

Lumumba was only released after a Swiss university professor came forward with a till receipt proving the father-of-two was at work and not involved in the crime.

Amanda Knox arrives with her husband Christopher Robinson (L) at the courthouse in Florence, on June 5, 2024 before a hearing in a slander case, related to her jailing and later acquittal for the murder of her British roommate in 2007 

Knox and Sollecito had only been dating for a short amount of time before Meredith’s death 

Knox has returned to live in the Pacific northwest but admitted in 2016 that she will never truly be able to recapture her past life 

Since her release from an Italian prison in 2011, Knox has embraced life, becoming a mum of two and a successful broadcaster 

Knox, who is now a mother of two and a criminal justice reform advocate, will not serve any jail time for the conviction as she had already spent some three years behind bars.

She told Sky TG24: ‘When I raise my children, I hope they see my strength. I am lucky to have a family and friends who support me in a fight that will perhaps continue throughout my life.

‘My message to those who are unjustly incarcerated is: you are not alone. There are very difficult days, but there are those who want to help you.

‘I love Italy and I hope that one day we can truly understand each other. I’m trying.’

Meanwhile, Kercher’s killer Guede, now 36, was released from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year term handed down in a fast-track trial that foresees lighter sentences under Italian law.

Guede’s DNA was discovered on Kercher’s body despite his claims that he was in the bathroom listening to music when she was killed.

He was recently ordered to wear a monitoring bracelet and not leave his home at night after an ex-girlfriend accused him of physical and sexual abuse.

An investigation into that case is still ongoing.