Released murder suspect Amanda Knox has revealed that during her time in prison she had an “epiphany” contemplating other “realities” in which she could have been killed or committed suicide.
Knox, who was acquitted of the 2007 killing of her roommate Meredith Kercher due to lack of evidence, posted a bizarre Twitter thread on Friday detailing how she was coping with her original conviction.
The 35-year-old lamented being “locked up for the best years of my life” and “deprived of opportunities” – describing her life as “small, cruel, sad and unfair”.
But Knox, nicknamed “Foxy Knoxy” by the tabloids, said she suddenly realized she had to stop “waiting” for her life to begin and quietly accept her punishment by finding joy through sit-ups , writing letters and reading.
She went on to say that while in prison she was reflecting on “alternate realities” in which she was murdered in place of Meredith and another in which she killed herself.
Knox uploaded a photo of herself in jail on Friday as she described her “epiphany” while serving what she believes to be a 26-year sentence
Amanda Knox (pictured speaking 2019, file photo) told her 128,000 followers that she would spend her prison days doing sit-ups, doing laps and reading and writing
She wrote: “What if I had been home that night, not Meredith, and Rudy Guede had killed me instead?
“What if I was acquitted and released in five years? In ten?
What if I had served my entire sentence and came home in my late 40s a barren, bereft woman? What if I killed myself…”
She said she examined those thoughts “vividly in detail” — a process that kept her from “creeping in” on her nightmares.
But Knox explained her “emotional baseline stayed firmly on sad throughout her time in prison,” adding, “I woke up sad, spent the whole day sad, and went to sleep sad.”
However, she found meaning in “sit-ups, going for laps, writing a letter, reading a book.”
“I walked slowly and deliberately on a tightrope across a bottomless misty chasm,” she wrote.
“Although I am now free and legal, in many ways I am a woman with a career in art (like I always dreamed of), an advocate for justice (which I never dreamed of), a woman with a… loving husband, a mother with a happy child…I’m still on the tightrope,” she added.
Knox captioned the thread with a photo of herself grinning in jail, writing, “Everyone goes through something, even when they’re smiling.”
Many Twitter users praised Knox’s “enlightening” thread – although others accused her of self-obsession.
One user wrote: “Yet it’s still ALL about you. Please go away and be quiet! A daughter and a sister were murdered and she is the most important person in this horrific event, not you.”
21-year-old Leedith University student Meredith was found stabbed and with her throat cut in her bedroom of the flat she shared with Knox in the Italian mountain town of Perugia.
Meredith Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was killed just three months after moving to Italy to study abroad at the prestigious University of Perugia (pictured in an undated photo released November 2007).
Knox was convicted of killing Kercher with her then-lover, Raffaele Sollecito. They are seen reuniting 15 years after their arrest in Italy
Knox, then 20, and her then 23-year-old Italian boyfriend Sollecito were arrested four days later as prosecutors claimed the murder was part of a sex game gone wrong.
They were convicted in an Italian court of twice raping and murdering Kercher.
The couple spent almost four years in prison before their conviction was overturned due to a lack of evidence linking them to the crime.
A court ruling ordered the Italian state to pay Knox $21,000 in damages.
Rudy Guede, 34, was instead found guilty after his DNA was discovered on Kercher’s body, although he claimed he was in the bathroom listening to music when she was killed.
He was released from prison after serving 13 years of a 30-year sentence.
After his release, he said Knox “know the truth and I know the truth.”
Knox has since rebranded herself as an activist, author, and podcast host.
She married writer and poet Christopher Robinson, 39, and the couple share a baby girl named Eureka.
Taking to Twitter, Knox revealed how her mother had worried about being depressed in prison – although she added that she knew “deep in my bones I would survive”.
She started the thread by saying she felt “the earth fell away from under me and global shame rained down on me” after being convicted of Kercher’s murder in 2009 and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Rudy Guede, pictured in 2007, is the only person convicted of Kercher’s murder. He was released from prison after 13 years
Last year, after his release from prison, Guede, 34, clearly implied that Knox, 35, “knows the truth and I know the truth.” Pictured in 2020
The house where Kercher was killed in Perugia, Italy in 2007
“My epiphany was this: I was not waiting to get my life back, as I had assumed during the first two years of trial and imprisonment,” she wrote.
“I wasn’t a lost tourist waiting to go home. I was a prisoner and prison was my home.
“I thought I was in limbo, awkwardly positioned between my life (the life I should have lived) and someone else’s life (the life of a killer). It was not me. I’ve never been.
“The sentencing, the verdict, the jail cell – *that* was my life.
“There wasn’t a life I *should* have lived. There was just my life, this life unfolding before me.’
She said the revelation gave her “clarity” and made her realize “however small, cruel, sad and unfair that life was, it was *my* life.”
“Mine to make sense of this, mine to live to the best of my ability,” she added.
“There was no more waiting. There was only now.’