← Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
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- [00:02]
Amanda Knox
Meet the computer you can talk to.
- [00:04]
Rebecca Sebastian
With Copilot on Windows.
- [00:05]
Amanda Knox
Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision.
- [00:19]
Rebecca Sebastian
Copilot sees what you see.
- [00:21]
Amanda Knox
Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new.
- [00:24]
Rebecca Sebastian
Apps, games and skills faster.
- [00:26]
Amanda Knox
Try now@windows.com copilot.
- [00:31]
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- [01:05]
Rebecca Sebastian
This is ct media.
- [01:12]
A note to listeners, this story contains sensitive content including sexual abuse, child murder, and dark spiritual themes, and may not be suitable for all listeners.
- [01:35]
Mike Kosper
Hey everybody. Welcome back. This is the final bonus episode of Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. If you've listened all the way through. Thanks so much. We've certainly been on a journey. On the first episode of our show, we went to Arkansas and we revisited the case of the West Memphis Three, a case where fear and unchecked beliefs and conspiracy theories filled in gaps where evidence didn't fit. Today we're going to end with a story that mirrors that hysteria, but on a different continent. We're going to talk to somebody who found herself at the center of a storm just as powerful. And this is an infamous story. Rebecca, do you want to tell everybody who our guest is?
- [02:16]
Rebecca Sebastian
I do. I can't wait. I feel like we've been sitting on this for a minute also. It's good to be back chatting with you.
- [02:21]
Mike Kosper
It is good to be back before.
- [02:23]
Rebecca Sebastian
I introduce our guest. Speaking of the West Memphis Three, there was big news in that case actually just a couple weeks ago. As we know and I think we talked about here, their evidence was approved by the Supreme Court to be retested. In that case, months and months went by. I think that happened in spring of 2024 and then there was an update in July. It has actually been sent to a laboratory in Virginia, which is really exciting but interesting because I guess they're saying it's so old that going through this new, more rigorous DNA testing could actually deteriorate it and it may not provide any results. So we're hoping that's not the case, but that's the status.
- [03:02]
Mike Kosper
It's a real risk.
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Rebecca Sebastian
It's a big risk. Yeah.
- [03:05]
Mike Kosper
Can you talk people through just for a moment? Why has it been so long? Because they've been asking for this for quite a while.
- [03:10]
Rebecca Sebastian
I've asked so many people this and no one can give a real answer on the resistance other than they're resistant to it. And that even when it gets approved, it still has to go through all these different machinations of bureaucracy and red tape. But it isn't new evidence. And that was always one of the holdups. It's like existing evidence that they're testing with new technology. And that isn't as straightforward a path, from what I understand. But I do think they are going to use these MVACs. Do you know about these? They're like Hoovers for rocks and grass. It's wild. I learned about it on Forensic Files. But anyway, so it's new technology, not new evidence. And I think that isn't as clear a path.
- [03:49]
Mike Kosper
All right, so let's get to our guest. Who is our guest today and how might our listeners have heard about her in the past?
- [03:56]
Rebecca Sebastian
I would guess a lot of people have, but we were really lucky enough to sit down with exoneree author, producer and advocate Amanda Knox. I take for granted that everybody knows her story, maybe people don't. So I'll give a really condensed version of her story and some people just might know her name and know something happened. But here's what happened. Amanda was a 20 year old American student in Perugia, Italy. This was 2007. She was studying abroad and she had a roommate named Meredith Kercher who was tragically, violently murdered in the apartment that they shared in this little town with two other women. From the jump, these Italian prosecutors fixated on Amanda, alleging she had a very lurid motive and they placed her at the center of this crime. Part of their theory was that she was a she devil of sorts who convinced her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito to kill Meredith.
- [04:51]
Mike Kosper
And there was this whole thing where she had this nickname in the press like she was Foxy Noxy. You know, this idea that she was this.
- [04:59]
Rebecca Sebastian
Like a vixen.
- [05:00]
Mike Kosper
Yeah, she was a vixen. She was promiscuous. She was this, that and the other. And yet they leaned into that quite a bit in ways that I think were brutal to her.
- [05:09]
Rebecca Sebastian
Brutal, unfair, unwarranted, and the foxy Knoxy nickname came from middle school, you know, and they just twisted this into a different identity, really. And we'll talk about this with her mirrors. A lot of. There's a lot of parallels to the West Memphis Three, but Amanda and Rafael were arrested and convicted in 2009. She spent four years in prison. But then in 2011, an appeals court freed Amanda. And through several hearings and more court appearances, in 2015, Italy's highest court definitively exonerated both Amanda and Rafaela. By that time, Amanda, another man, Rudy Guede, whose DNA, by the way, and prints were all over the crime scene, was finally prosecuted, convicted, and is imprisoned at this time. And that's just like, I mean, the surface of her story.
- [05:58]
Mike Kosper
Yeah, no, it's a truly wild story. And when we think about the Satanic Panic as a whole, the way in which innocent people were, you know, they had these stories projected onto them. Listeners will hear this, like, Amanda talks a lot about othering and how she was othered. She was created into this villain. It ties into a lot of what we've talked about regarding conspiracy theories and why the stories people tell about the facts on the ground are often more persuasive than the evidence.
- [06:30]
Rebecca Sebastian
Yeah, I mean, to hear it in her own words in that setting, I'm excited for our listeners to hear it. I think it's sort of colors and presents so much of what we've talked about in a very personal way. So I'm really grateful we got to speak with her and ready to share her conversation.
- [06:47]
Mike Kosper
Before we start, I'll just second that and say I think it was an honor that she came and talked to us about this, because I think she is also looking at the history of the Satanic Panic and has a real sense of how did this inform what happened to her and how might this affect people who are falsely accused of things in the future. And she's quite devoted to working to help protect people to prevent them from going through what she went through.
- [07:14]
Rebecca Sebastian
Yeah, it's really admirable. And honestly, she's been on my bucket list of interviews for more than six years, so this was really cool.
- [07:21]
Mike Kosper
All right, enjoy.
- [07:23]
Rebecca Sebastian
Amanda, we're really excited to welcome you to Devil in the Deep Blue Sea. Thank you so much for being with us.
- [07:29]
Amanda Knox
Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Happy to talk about fake Satan.
- [07:36]
Rebecca Sebastian
Truer words were never spoken.
- [07:39]
The Satanic Panic is the center of the story we told the season. And when I heard you say those exact words on another podcast interview, I was like, we have to talk to Amanda Knox. I'M sure you're familiar with the West Memphis Three case.
- [07:56]
Amanda Knox
Yes, I actually know two of them personally, so, yeah.
- [08:00]
Rebecca Sebastian
Oh, wow.
- [08:00]
Amanda Knox
Yeah.
- [08:01]
Rebecca Sebastian
Well, we had Dan Stidham on who was Jesse Misskelley's first defense attorney.
- [08:06]
Amanda Knox
So she was a big voice. Jesse is the only one who I haven't met personally. Yeah.
- [08:10]
Rebecca Sebastian
Yeah. So you know their story and you know them well, and I'm kind of curious and Mike and I have talked about this. If you see yourself in any of them, the stories are wildly different. Although they both are wrongful convictions, particularly Damien Echols really got mischaracterized as something he may or may not have been, kind of really wasn't. And then, you know, how much of that informed who he did become. Did he lean into any of this sort of what was projected onto him? And obviously his fate changed his life so much. Have you ever thought of yourself and him or any of them with parallel?
- [08:50]
Amanda Knox
Absolutely. So Damian was the first ever other wrongly convicted person I ever met. And that was because I believe we got out of prison on the same exact day, like October. October 4, 2011. And because a lot of his supporters, like, he famously was supported by a lot of rock stars, and they happened to be here in Seattle, where I'm from. And so actually, it was through those connections that I was able to meet another wrongly convicted person for the first time. And it was really striking to me because, you know, coming home from Italy and from my own prosecution and finally being released and acquitted, at that moment in time, I thought that I was going to get to go back to being just an anonymous college student. Like, I hadn't fully wrapped my head around the fact that the stigma of being accused of murder was going to follow me throughout the rest of my life. And I didn't have any appreciation or understanding of just wrongful convictions in general. Like, I didn't grow up interested in criminal justice. I hadn't heard stories of wrongful convictions before. And so I really felt very alone. And that was something I was. I was really grappling with. And so coming into contact with someone who had arguably been through way worse than me, like, he was on death row, he was in for 18 years. He, you know, he only got out because of an Alford plea. He wasn't actually acquitted. So, like, the injustice around what happened to him was so palpable and so unresolved. And, you know, mine wasn't resolved either. I was still on trial. You know, I went through another four years of trial, but his was even more so. And I think the thing that really struck me was we both were othered by the communities that prosecuted us, right? Like I was literally a foreigner in a foreign land. He was a kind of a foreigner in his own land, right? Like he was just the odd kid who listened to different kinds of music. But interestingly was not an odd kid of that era, right? There were a lot of kids who were listening to Metallica and a lot of kids who are responding to like the, you know, the hyper religio of the moment with a kind of like rebellious anti religiosity or like, oh, we're going to talk about Jesus all the time. Well, I'm going to worship the moon. You know, like there was that sort of attitude and I even had a moment like that in high school and like, you know, I remember in high school, so I went to a Catholic high school and I was first confronted with like religion as a part of identity. And I was asked like in religion class for the first time to like write about my religion, which I didn't have one. And so a rebellious part of me was like, well, I worship the moon. You know, like I had a moment like that. And so like I was. And I was remember thinking when I heard Damian's story, like thank goodness that like odd essay that I wrote in religion class when I was like 15 years old didn't end up in my own case because that would absolutely have been used against me. And like the way that.
- [12:05]
Someone is othered and othered in a way where like it's hyped up so that there's a lot of emotional resonance to the way that they are othered. But like what is communicated is something that people don't understand. Like people did not understand what the Wicca religion was. They just associated it with evil. And that was coming from a place of ignorance and it was coming from a place of hysterical hysteria. And it was deeply, deeply irresponsible. You know, it's a lack of evidence, like physical evidence tying them to the crime was substituted with character assassination. You saw the same thing happening with my case where instead of it being as much about the occultism, it was much more about like vilifying me through my sexuality. But there was an element of occultism in the original way that I was accused. It eventually got dropped as a motive by the prosecution. But like, and we can get into the history of my prosecutor as someone who is interested in like occultism as, as something that he is interested in prosecuting. But originally because my roommate was murdered the day After Halloween, there was a sort of automatic assumption that there was something satanic at the heart of this crime, when in fact it was just. It just happened to be a good day for someone to break and enter into a house. Cause they could assume that people might have been not there. So it's just like a coincidence. But like, so all of those things.
- [13:34]
Mike Kosper
Coming into play and the Italian press really hung onto the satanic narrative a lot longer than the prosecution did. Right.
- [13:41]
Amanda Knox
So it was still being brought up in court during my pre trial, which is. I mean, it's sort of like, it's hard to say what the equivalent is in Italian justice versus American. It's kind of like a grand jury. It's like the trial before the trial where you just determine whether or not there's enough evidence. And I remember distinctly that in my pre trial, the prosecution was still making arguments about how there was reason to believe that this was some kind of occult informed, like orgy murder. Like it was a ritualistic. They were arguing there was something ritualistic about the murder and that it wasn't a coincidence that it happened on the Day of the Dead. Right. Like they were making that argument without recognizing that it was just a coincidence. Like especially around the reporting, there was this fear of female power. So I was like turned into this femme fatale figure who had almost like mythical power, magical power, over the young men who I conscripted to, you know, rape my roommate for me and then hold her down while I ritually murdered her. Like there was an element of something extra added to the perception of me and my ability to control and manipulate. And that felt very witchy in the way that it was portrayed.
- [15:01]
Rebecca Sebastian
Yeah, I want to talk about that for a second. Because they kept the narrative about you being sort of the puppet master in a more like spiritual witchy sense that you described. Once they realized this had to have been a man, at least because of the sexual assault, why do you think they were still so hell bent on including you in it at that point? Was it because they had initially targeted you and they didn't want to? Like, was it an ego pride thing? They couldn't remove you from the narrative altogether, so that was the easiest way? Or was it true belief in the idea that, well, there must be a she devil in charge of this?
- [15:38]
Amanda Knox
Well, what my prosecutor says and maintains to this day is that the moment he arrived at the crime scene, he realized that the crime was more than it appeared to be. So what it appeared to be is that someone broke into our home and raped and murdered my roommate. And that's what actually happened. But my prosecutor said that he took one look at this break in and determined that it was actually staged, that this break in was not real. It was someone within the house was involved in the crime. We were four roommates altogether. So one of us was involved in this crime and attempting to cover it up. And he quickly fixated on me because I was the youngest. I was the only foreigner. My other two roommates were Italian, they were older. And I was the one who he and the other police determined was not reacting appropriately to the news of my roommate's horrible murder. So one thing to know about my prosecutor, and, you know, it's interesting because the history of the satanic panic in Italy is, you know, it made its way across the ocean and it certainly, like, appeared in Italy and had, like. I think the. The most famous case of a very typical satanic panic case was that of Federico Scotti in 1997. Did you. Have you guys heard of this case?
- [17:01]
Rebecca Sebastian
Yeah, Mike, I think you. You told me that one.
- [17:04]
Amanda Knox
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, he's accused of being part of, like, you know, 10 other people accused of being a part of this satanic pedophile ring. And they accuse a priest of, like, bringing children into graveyards and doing weird satanic rituals, all of which, without any evidence whatsoever, all of it coerced from, you know, young children who are talking to this one specific psychologist. So very, very classic satanic panic case. There's a different case, though, that had some satanic panic elements, which was the Monster of Florence case. Are you guys familiar with that case? Yeah.
- [17:37]
Rebecca Sebastian
Yes.
- [17:38]
Mike Kosper
And that was your prosecutor.
- [17:39]
Amanda Knox
Y. So this is the connection with my prosecutor. So this, the Monster of Florence case was a serial killer case that was happening in the 80s and 90s around the Florence region, where these couples were being murdered when they were having sexual intercourse in, like, their cars in the countryside. And it was very dramatic, very scary. It wasn't clear who committed this crime. Eventually, the police sort of honed in on this group of people that they called the companion day, which is like the snack buddies. And they made a case that they were committed committing these crimes. But even so, like, it was very unclear because they never found the murder weapon. They never understood what the motive could be. It's still a case that's very open and up for interpretation, and a lot of people are not convinced even that the two people who were convicted are actually necessarily the actual murderers. And my prosecutor came in much later working with another prosecutor out of Florence named Jutari. And they made the case that the monster of Florence was actually a group of people who were being ordered by this, like, psychopathic doctor who was really high up on this secret satanic society that was harvesting women's organs to perform satanic rituals.
- [18:57]
Mike Kosper
There were, like, theories about the masons tied into all of this and stuff, too. I mean, it was very elaborate.
- [19:03]
Amanda Knox
Yes, it was a very elaborate concept. Conspiratorial plot. And that's where it relates back to what was happening with my case, where, like, my prosecutor has a history of assuming conspiratorial plots for what appear to be just basic crimes. And. And so he. He took one look at this case, which is a burglar broke into my house and raped and murdered my roommate and decided there was actually some very, you know, deep and sinister conspir. Editorial plot. He hypothesized this, like, secret love triangle between me and my boyfriend and this completely random burglar who just. The only connection that he had was he played basketball with the guys who lived downstairs from us. Like, I didn't even know his name. But, like, regardless, there's a secret, you know, love triangle situation. There's secret female on female hatred going on, and that all culminates in a highly sexualized, violent episode. And again, it speaks to this idea that. And it's this idea that's also sort of embedded in Italian culture, which is this idea that there's more to something than what it seems like. There's something under the surface. We have to pull the curtain aside from what appears to be the truth in order to discover the darker, more sinister, more, you know, conspiratorial truth at the heart of any, like, terrible case.
- [20:32]
Mike Kosper
It's such the heart of all conspiracy theories, right? Like, life is chaotic and tragic and disorienting and unpredictable. But the conspiracy theory comes in as a way of saying, I can help you make sense of all of this. So if you have this grander theory that sort of ties all of these evil things together or that frames the catastrophic in this bizarre and horrible way for the believer, for the true believer in the theory, it's actually, like, a comforting thing to go, well, at least I know what's going. I can make sense of the senseless now.
- [21:08]
Amanda Knox
Absolutely. And I. And that's where to your point of, like, why did my prosecutor pursue this case against me when very early on in the investigation, they actually did identify who the actual murderer was? They found his DNA all over my, you know, roommate's body. Like, it was very clear who had committed this crime. And there were shoe prints. There were shoe prints in, you know, like he left his fingerprints and footprints in my roommate's blood. Like there was. He had a history of breaking it, entering. He had been arrested five days earlier for breaking and entering into another facility. So like, this guy had an M.O. he had a background in this. He hadn't killed anyone before, but he was aggressive towards women. Like, it was all basically he was this like young sort of drifter kid who was just spiraling out of control and eventually was going to do what he did. But they only like discovered and identified him after they had already formulated this idea about me. And I think a lot of people have argued in the past that the reason why they continued to prosecute this case against me was because they didn't want to admit that they were wrong. And, you know, they knew that I was innocent, but they didn't care. Like. And I actually, I actually believe it's more complicated than that. I think that they genuinely believed in the story that they had like, strong feelings about that were impacting the way that they were viewing reality. And I think the more interesting aspect of this for me as someone who is interested in wrongful convictions and why the satanic panic is so fascinating is that like, people genuinely believe in the. Like the psychologists who were, you know, interviewing small children and like slowly and steadily coercing these children into saying that their parents were sexually molesting them believed that they were doing the right thing. And they believed in their own ideas about repressed memory. And, and they, and there was like a deep, deep, like the hysteria wouldn't have existed if it wasn't because like, if people just had too much ego in it. And the reason why I find the satanic panic so fascinating is because it is an example, like the most shining example of what's always going on in wrongful convictions, which is that well intentioned people believe crazy things even in spite, like in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And yet, like, when their gut tells them something, they can't let go of it. And then, you know, and that's why there's still people in prison to this day accused of having taken part in satanic pedophile rings when there's literally no evidence that that actually happened. And that's what's troubling to me is that like, we haven't really learned that lesson.
- [23:53]
Hablas espanol spries du dzoits?
- [23:56]
Rebecca Sebastian
If you used Babbel, you would Babbel's conversation based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com Spotify spelled B A B-B-E L.com Spotify rules and restrictions may apply.
- [24:24]
Mike Kosper
Hey, we hope you are enjoying the show. Just so you know, the best way to contribute to the production of this podcast is actually by subscribing to Christianity Today using our special link orderct.com deepbluesea Listeners like you get 25% off your subscription and unlimited access to the platform that elevates the stories and ideas of the Kingdom of God. That's orderct.com deepblue sea all one word we look forward to having you join us. It makes me think of the case. I can't remember the name, but it's Lawrence Wright wrote a book about it called Remembering Satan. Lawrence Wright was a reporter for the New Yorker for many, many years. But it's a case from East Washington where this father was in the height of the panic. His kids showed up at a whether I can't remember if it was a school or a daycare, they had bruises on their knees or whatever. I mean, they're kids, like kids have bruises on their knees.
- [25:19]
Amanda Knox
You know, my kids have bruises constantly.
- [25:21]
Mike Kosper
Right. And you know, she calls the police. The police then do one of these sort of coercive interviews that pulls out all this horrific stuff. And the craziest part of this story is that when they bring the father in where they have this statement from the child saying, these things happened to me and he did it and it was part of the satanic ritual and everything else, the father looks at the statement and says, well, I don't remember any of this, but my children aren't liars. And I know this happens and I know that people get caught up in this stuff, so it must be true. So he signs the confession and he goes to prison for more than a decade for something that now most people look at and say, yeah, this. Nothing ever happened here.
- [26:09]
Amanda Knox
Yeah, I mean, I think to this day people don't understand how interrogations go down and how coercive and psychologically damaging it is to be confronted either with lies, which is something that routinely happens to this day, or with like, like you said like the somebody that you love and you care about and who you cherish is supposedly making an accusation against you. Instead of going, that's wrong, they're lying. You, like the person, like your mind tries to make sense of that reality. And one of the things that police will offer to you is, well, maybe you just don't remember it. And it's like, well, and then they offer you this, like this sort of psychological backdoor, which is, oh, it did happen. Like, we know for a fact that it happened. So if you don't remember it, then you must be so traumatized by it that you don't remember it. And then that justifies both drawing out repressed memories from witnesses, but also getting people to confess. Like, it's the exact same principle. And I mean, I'm so glad that there are people who have been studying this phenomenon, especially like Professor Elizabeth Loftus, who has proven that you, you know, through studies that you can plant false memories in people. And it's remarkably easy and like astonishingly easy to, to implant memories that, that you absolutely should have reason to suspect. And yet, like, in the right circumstances, anybody can be convinced of anything. And that's really deeply scary and troubling, especially when you're confronted with, you know, people who seem like law enforcement or like psychological professionals who seem to have an agenda, who seem to have this, like, theory of the universe that they're trying to prove. And so they unwittingly are imposing their reality on another person who is in a fragile and vulnerable state of mind.
- [28:04]
Rebecca Sebastian
I could almost imagine it feeling like a reprieve, like, okay, well, there's an explanation that I can somehow, even though it's awful and I'm going to. There's going to be consequences for me.
- [28:15]
Amanda Knox
Okay.
- [28:16]
Rebecca Sebastian
Like, let's, you know, like some kind of weird and an end to the interrogation, which I'm sure you know better than anyone. I think it's so generous. You said well intentioned when referring to prosecuting teams and investigators. And I think that's so important. We talked a lot about that, that the motive is not necessarily just to take the wrong person down. Anyone, pick anyone off the street. That wasn't it. You know, it was really about creating this story to make sense of something, but something we often came up against, and I still struggle with is it's like as if a rape and murder of a woman isn't enough, we have to add a whole level of drama and details that aren't real. And with children, child abuse, there's so much very intentionally Hidden abuse in the church of not just women and children, but young men too.
- [29:10]
That gets completely swept under the rug and great pains are taken to keep it hidden. And then there's all these lies created around other crimes in the name of, like, religion and using all this religiosity and spirituality that didn't exist. And that cognitive dissonance, like some sometimes is, like, too big for my brain and why these things matter but are so difficult to kind of unravel.
- [29:33]
Amanda Knox
I even try to think about, like, okay, what was happening culturally just before then. Right. Like, the satanic panic is really happening during the 80s. Well, what's happening during the 60s and 70s? Well, there's a lot of liberation of women that's going on.
- [29:49]
Rebecca Sebastian
Right.
- [29:49]
Amanda Knox
And now there's a lot of, like, fear and hysteria around the liberated woman. And, you know, if the mother is not looking after her kids all the time, well, what horrible things could be happening? Like. And so there. It's absolutely like. It's like a pendulum swing kind of thing where, like, there is a genuine, like, fear and uncertainty within society as it is evolving and people are motivated, again, like, consciously or unconsciously to vilify something that they don't understand or that they are afraid of. And I think think women's sexuality was something that was being hugely policed because it was also something that was hugely in flux. And so that's why you see, like, so many women or youth, like, rebellious youth. Anybody who is, like, pushing back against, like, the traditional status quo is being observed not just from a place of, like, oh, you know, alas, our kids are doing something different, but, like, really from a place of, like, deep suspicion. And, I mean, I'm not. I'm not a historical expert on any of this. And, like, I'm interested to see, like, how our, like, puritanical roots have, like, evolved and how there's, like, this upswing and downswing of. Of, like, cultural legit, like religious hysteria that is, like, coming into conflict with modern ideals. But, like, this is that, you know, Perfect Storm.
- [31:13]
Mike Kosper
Sure. That was such a part of your. Your story. I mean, the whole Foxy Noxy narrative, Right, That. Yeah, that became part, you know, part of the narrative in the press was really to sort of vilify you based on lifestyle decisions, whatever you want to call it, that were interpreted in a way that fed into this broader satanic narrative. Right.
- [31:35]
Amanda Knox
Yeah. I mean, ultimately, the prosecution in my case was. Had a very difficult job, which was, how do we find primarily responsible a woman for a man's crime, right. Like, a man committed this crime against my roommate. How do we hold a woman accountable? Well, she has to be a very special kind of woman. A sexual predator of a woman. A woman who has outsized, lustful impulses. And why would she commit this crime except for the most misogynistic idea possible, which is that all women secretly hate each other and are in sexual competition with each other. That was the prevailing narrative because, like, again, they couldn't, like, come up even with a motive. There was. No one ever saw me and Meredith argue. No one, like, no one ever saw me ever interact with the guy whose freaking DNA was all over the crime scene. And so, like, this secret, conspiratorial, like, women's secretly hating other women and coming into, like, sexual violence with each other was this deep, like, misogynistic idea that had deep roots in, like, traditional values. And it made itself manifest in. In the narrative around that was primarily focused on character assassination in the same way. Like, at a certain point, my prosecutor was like, we don't. You know, fine, there's no evidence of her in the bedroom where it happened, but that doesn't mean that she wasn't outside the bedroom telling the boys what to do. And it was like, oh, my God, like, what?
- [33:07]
Rebecca Sebastian
It's a lot. It's a lot to put on a college student. Even the capability and the diabolical tendency you'd have to have to orchestrate all of that.
- [33:18]
Amanda Knox
Right. Like the calling me Luciferina in court. Like, the literal, like, invocation of the devil. Like, this is the female manifestation. You must condemn her because she is the female manifestation of Lucifer, the devil.
- [33:32]
Mike Kosper
Yeah.
- [33:33]
Rebecca Sebastian
So I want to kind of come back a little bit more. Present. Now, we watched the scripted series that you were a huge part of. Co produced, correct? With.
- [33:44]
Amanda Knox
Yeah, I was an executive producer. I co wrote the final episode. Okay, well, congrats. I was deeply involved. Yes.
- [33:51]
Rebecca Sebastian
Your fingerprint is definitely all over it, and there's a lot I want to talk about with it. But can you start with why you wanted to put out another story about your story? There's been two documentaries. It would be easy maybe, for you to not do that. I'm sure it would be easier. Tell us why you decided to do it and your partnership with Monica Linsky. To me.
- [34:14]
Amanda Knox
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, to be sure. There has been a ton of coverage of this case. Right. Like, there's a Netflix documentary for which I was interviewed. I didn't actually, like, participate in any of the production of that, but I was interviewed for that. But there have been a million podcasts, and there have been, you know, lifetime movies and. And shows that we're inspired by and a bazillion books like, why would I want to contribute to that ongoing onslaught of representation of the case? One is wit of which is that this one is one that I had an actual say in. You know, it's. It's all of those other, you know, documentaries and things. Like, I didn't have a say in those. I was just like. If I was either not at all addressed or talked to, or I was just a source, I was just an interview. And so, on the one hand, I think that I was interested in the opportunity to challenge Hollywood to consider sources as also creative partners. Traditionally, in Hollywood, these kinds of stories are made without the creative input or consent of the sources of that material. And it's something that I've been thinking about a lot precisely because so much has been made of my case. Like, I wrote a piece in the Atlantic a few years ago when this movie Stillwater came out that was, you know, the Amanda Knox story, but in France and with slightly different names. You know, like, they. They changed a few of the details, but ultimately were selling it as the Amanda Knox story. And the way that they then, you know, depicted the Amana Knox character as being indirectly involved and therefore at least partially guilty of the murder of her roommate. And, like, they were able to get away with that because they changed the names. But ultimately, there's going to be, like, reputational impact on me. Like, people are gonna watch that and they're gonna think of me, and then they're gonna associate me with the feelings that they feel about the character in the. In the story. And I wrote a piece about, like, okay, well, you know, yes, historically, there has been conflict between real human beings who have had their stories sort of usurped by the entertainment industry and had it repackaged for entertainment purposes, often at the expense of the truth and at the expense of, like, these people's real lives. And so I was questioning that sort of issue. And I had been approached numerous, numerous times in the past to do a fictionalized dramatization of what happened. And I had pushed back against that for a long time because I felt like it wasn't really my story to tell in the sense that, like, it's the story of two girls go to Perugia, Italy, and only one lives to tell the tale, right? And, like, it didn't have, like, everything that happened to us, like, to Meredith and to me, was out of our control. Other people were the protagonists of a story for which we were just victims. And so it didn't really feel like I was like, what kind of story even is that? It's just like, trauma porn. I didn't really want to participate in anything like that. And it wasn't until Monica reached out to me, Monica Lewinsky, who I had been in contact with for many years, to suggest the idea of doing a dramatization of the story, but one in which that it wasn't, like, just focused on the bad thing that happened to us. Right. It was more interested in a broader view of how does someone live with and make sense of a traumatic event that happens in their life? And it just so happened that at the time that she reached out to me, I was already in the process of communicating with my prosecutor. And the story of me going back to Italy to confront my prosecutor was a story for which I was a protagonist. I was making choices. I was responding to, yes, this traumatic thing that happened to me, but I was finally taking actions that said something about me. It wasn't just the bad things that were happening to me, but in order to appreciate why, like, the stakes of me going back to Italy to confront my prosecutor, you had to go back in time to see what had happened and what the relationship, like, how my relationship with my prosecutor had evolved over time. And so that was how we were approaching the story. And it was one that I felt really positive about because I did feel that, like, my choice, my personal choice to reach out to my prosecutor, to develop a correspondence with him, to develop a relationship, to go back and confront him. These were choices that I made that I didn't have to make. And they really did say something about who I was. And it said something also about how I'm approaching a very traumatic situation, which is like, how do we make sense of how we are harmed? How does someone who has been harmed by another human being confront that harm? Confront the harmer? And it was also an opportunity to really talk about how wrongful convictions happen. I think that one of the. My. My biggest regrets about the way that I see wrongful convictions dramatized is very often Hollywood feels compelled to invent an evil policeman character who, like, absolutely knows that the person is innocent and is going after them anyway and is, like, specifically framing them and planting the evidence. And while that is true in some cases, especially some really egregious cases out of Chicago, like, I think that the vast majority of wrongful convictions are a result of. Of law enforcement who believes in what they are doing. Like, it's not an issue of bad apples. It's a. It's an issue of, like, systemic problems, systemic bias against, you know, certain, you know, people who find themselves in the crosshairs of law enforcement. And it's much more, like, psychologically interesting that way. But it also means that there's an opportunity for connection, for understanding, and for resolution. Whereas, like, you know, if you have a psychopath police officer or a psychopath prosecutor, there's no, like, hope. There's no resolution.
- [40:32]
Mike Kosper
Yeah.
- [40:32]
Amanda Knox
And so that was my biggest goal, was, like, really trying to contextualize my prosecutor and the police and show how there was, like, deep misunderstandings on a linguistic and cultural level, but also, like, appreciating how my prosecutor's history sort of set him up to be of the mind to think in conspiratorial terms in a situation that was actually a very, you know, neat and tidy.
- [41:00]
Rebecca Sebastian
Cut and dry.
- [41:01]
Amanda Knox
Cut and dry. Basic rape and murder, if you can say that.
- [41:07]
Mike Kosper
It's interesting you say that. I mean, that was one of the things that really struck me about the series was the humanization of him as a character in the series. And a few years ago, I did a podcast series called the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. This is actually a Seattle story. There was a church in Seattle called Mars Hill.
- [41:22]
Amanda Knox
Yeah, I'm aware of Mars Hill. Oh, my God. Wait, so what happened with Mars Hill? So I'm driven by it.
- [41:29]
Mike Kosper
I'll give you the copy from the opening credits. No, they were planted in 1996, and in 2014, in the midst of a number of scandals, the lead pastor resigned. And at that point, they were a church of 15,000 people. Fifteen locations across Seattle, Oregon, Albuquerque, you know, several other locations, Orange County. And he resigns in October of that year, and they close their doors December 30th of that year, and they were done. That was the end. And it was an effort on my part to sort of look at what had happened inside that story. And in particular, what I was interested in is, you know, what's so easy to do in the aftermath of stuff like this is to take these characters and just turn them into pure villains. Right. And it was so crucial to me to make sure that anybody who listened to this thing understood, why did people love this place? Why did it matter to them? Why did 15,000 people show up at this, in spite of the problems which had been evident from early on in the process? And I think that's what I appreciated about the series was this feeling of, you don't just turn this Guy into a cartoon villain with a twirly mustache. You know, that's just out to get you.
- [42:47]
Amanda Knox
Well, that's, that's what they did to me, right? And that's the thing that they did with the satanic panic is like they turned human beings into mustache twirling villains and threw them in prison. Like, I learned a lesson. So I wasn't about to repeat the same mistake.
- [43:05]
Mike Kosper
I think of Damien Echols actually, as well as another example of this. Like Damian. One of the things you see when you go back and you watch those documentaries from the early part of that whole, that whole affair. Damian's just profoundly naive. He doesn't understand the gravity of the situation that he's in.
- [43:23]
Amanda Knox
And he's so young. Like, why would he.
- [43:26]
Mike Kosper
Right? And I think that's a child. I think that's probably true of you as well. Like, you're in the situation where you're going, well, I know I didn't do this. It's gotta work out.
- [43:37]
Amanda Knox
It's so utterly surreal to sit in a courtroom and hear somebody describe how like, I had to sit there while my prosecutor was like, Amanda said you. This is what you get, you little goody two shoes. This is what Amanda probably said is she stabbed her to death. And it's like, are you kidding me, right? This is just. All of this, all of this is just completely made up.
- [44:00]
Mike Kosper
And you have to be wondering, like, how are these people buying this? Nobody's buying this, right? Like, this isn't gonna. There's no way this is gonna come back to like, send me to jail. Because there's no way that people are gonna believe this, right?
- [44:11]
Amanda Knox
I mean, that's what my family and I were telling ourselves the whole time. Like, eventually there's going to be adult, like an adult in the room who's going to be like, okay, that, that was really nice and crazy, but now let's actually like, you know, truth beyond a reasonable doubt, you know, like, and. And I think the thing that really astonished me was that. And was a huge, huge growing moment for me was, you know, when I was convicted and I was like, oh my God, there are no adults in the room.
- [44:42]
Rebecca Sebastian
Like, you're on your own.
- [44:44]
Amanda Knox
I'm on my. Like, truth doesn't matter, I guess. And it's the story that matters. And people are truly captured by narratives, by ideologies and, and the ideology behind like the. There's a Satanist cult lurking in, behind closed doors in the most innocuous places. Like, that was a belief system. People believed that so strongly that they, like, imposed that reality on others. And that's not a simple thing of mustache twirling villains. That is people who are captured by stories and ideologies.
- [45:23]
Russell Moore
This is Russell Moore inviting you to join me on the Russell Moore show, where we look for signposts in a strange land, standing fast, fast to what really matters. We've welcomed public intellectuals such as David Brooks and Jonathan Haidt, novelists such as Marilyn Robinson and Lee Finger, Bible teachers such as Beth Moore and the late Tim Keller, scholars such as N.T. wright and Stanley Hauerwas, songwriters such as Andrew Peterson and Lecrae, filmmakers such as Ken Burns, actors such as Rainn Wilson from the Office and Ethan Hawkins Hawk poets such as Malcolm Guy, David White, and political leaders such as former Vice president Mike Pence. So join us where we put kingdom over culture wars, truth over tribalism, pilgrimage over partisanship, witness over winning, and Christ over everything. Follow the Russell Moore show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [46:22]
Isaiah tells us of the greatness of his government and peace. There will be no end at Christianity today. We believe that because Christ reigns and so the church can flourish even in a world that's still fallen, still aching for his peace. This Christmas, you can help c T equip believers to live faithfully in this already and not yet time of the kingdom, seeing the world through the lens of Christ's truth and hope you can support that mission. Make your tax deductible year end gift before December 31st to help CT strengthen the church for generations to come. Give today@morect.com flourish. That's morect with one o.com flourish.
- [47:10]
Rebecca Sebastian
You know, in crime storytelling, we love to vilify, but we also, on the victim side, love to sanctify, if that's.
- [47:17]
Amanda Knox
A word or right.
- [47:18]
Rebecca Sebastian
And so there's like no nuance in the story of victims in these stories. And I think that's another big place where there's a lot of conflict over, like, whose story is this? Where does a victim's family play in. So may I ask how? Because I thought it was beautiful how you did integrate a story about Meredith into the Hulu series. How did you or didn't you communicate and approach the Kercher family?
- [47:46]
Amanda Knox
Yeah, great question. And you're right. Like so often there is this tendency to say, okay, who's the real victim of the story? Who's the one who is the highest in the victim hierarchy? Who, you know, who's the one who gets who therefore has a say or who owns the story more than anyone else. And to give a back of my interactions with the Kercher family, I've never had the opportunity to communicate with them. I have reached out to them. They have not responded to me, and their lawyer has been remarkably openly hostile towards me. So that has been extremely difficult. And in the case of, like, how we wanted to depict Meredith in the show, we were very careful because, you know, clearly, like, again, like, if it all comes down to it, like, two young women went to go study abroad in Perugia, Italy, and only one of them survived to tell the tale. I could not tell Meredith's story because I am not Meredith. I could only tell my story. And I got to glimpse Meredith and her humanity in ways that the rest of the world didn't. Like the rest of the most people in the entire world only got to know her as a corpse. I didn't. I had the privilege of getting to know her as a person, even if it was for a short amount of time. And it was really deeply crucial for everyone, like, not just me, but everyone who participated in the making of this series to, like, humanize her, to not depict her as a corpse. So we never show her, you know, we never show her body. Like, you don't see her at the crime scene. What you see is you always see her through the eyes of people who loved and knew her. And so what you see is my memories of her. Like, you know, when we were cooking in the kitchen, or when we were, you know, going and visiting the boys downstairs, or when we were, like, you know, goofing around in the bathroom together, like, these are real. Like, when we go to the flea market together, these are real human moments where this human being, who was a real human being, was allowed, you know, she was existing and deserved to live. And, like, trying to depict, like, the truth of what happened to her and really try to settle the score around that was also really important because there's a lot of, like, uncertainty around what really happened. So we were trying to be really clear and respectful about that. But, like, primarily in seeing her as the person who was alive and not the person who was dead, that was something that was really important to us. And, you know, obviously, I would love for, you know, Meredith's family to. To see this show and appreciate the effort that we've made to honor her through it. But I also know that, like, culturally, in our society, we do not set victims of crime to be easily or comfortable around victims of the criminal justice system. Like, we're very much typically pitted against Each other. Adversarial. Yeah, it's very adversarial. It's this very zero sum idea about who counts as a victim. And, like, the thing that I like to point out is it's like me being a victim of my prosecutor doesn't make her any less a victim of Rudy. Good day. Like, all of us are victims of terrible circumstances and all of our stories deserve to be told. And so, you know, I just tried to be really respectful about, like, what is mine to tell. And what was mine to tell was what I knew, what I experienced of her. And then, you know, doing deep, deep research into trying to understand the context behind the players who really made the decisions that ultimately led to inescapable and horrific consequences in both of our lives.
- [51:44]
Rebecca Sebastian
What I'm hearing is so much complexity and nuance that I feel like you held and really, like, grappled with to make this. And also that's required for almost, well, for truly every wrongful conviction case and maybe even every crime. And the moral panic and satanic panic, like, leaves no room for either of those.
- [52:03]
Amanda Knox
Right.
- [52:03]
Rebecca Sebastian
Like, that's the whole thing is that, like, complexity, subtlety, and nuance. There's just no time or room for it. And so it's just so much easier for people to go on to, like, the team Amanda or the other. In any case, you know, I think of Cyril and Adnan Syed and there's, I mean, countless cases where it's like, you pick a side and then like, never the two shall meet. And in the middle is not where we want to sit. So I just, I just, I'm moved that you held all of that in creating this. And it's what we tried to do with Devil in the Deep Blue Sea as well. So congratulations again. And just, I'm grateful for you doing that. And I would love to know a little bit about, like, how can you move through the world now knowing your story sometimes precedes you? How did you work through that? When did you let all of that go? Or have you?
- [52:55]
Amanda Knox
I mean, this is the big question that I grapple with in my book, Free My Search for Meaning. Because it's that idea of, like, okay, my freedom wasn't just taken away from me when they put me in a prison cell. Like, I became branded with this, like, scarlet letter of being the girl accused of murder. And I carry that brand with me. And the worst experience of my life was so highly publicized that it is a thing that in a way defines me and defines my opportunities in life, because that's how people view me. That's the first thing that they think of when they encounter me. And for a long time I felt really trapped by that, really isolated. Like there would, there was nothing that I could possibly accomplish in my life that could ever come to define me more than this horrible thing that I didn't do. And what do I do with that? How do I be free of that? And it's not as simple as just being like, well, I'm just gonna go about my life like it didn't happen. Like, just move on. Like, it's over, it's done with, move on. Like, well that's nice to think that that's possible, except it's not possible. Like, you know, I especially like this traumatic thing happened to me at a very developmental age. Like I grew up in the midst of a huge injustice, existential crisis. Like, that doesn't just get like deprogrammed out of me once I'm out of prison, right? Like, it's now a part of me. And so how do I move through my life in a way that I'm not debilitated or discouraged by that fact? And the way that I've come to think of it is that I am very informed by it. Right. Like some people spend four years in college getting a degree in biology. I spent four years in prison at the school of hard knocks getting a PhD in existential crisis management. Like, you know, like I, I have, I have a area of expertise that is like, and I know, I know things about, like, I have some hard won truths that I have like, learned the hard way. And you know, I may not be able to do my taxes to this day, but like, there are some things I know about life and about confronting crisis that position me well in the world. It doesn't just position me as a broken person, it positions me well. I'm actually well equipped to grapple with much of life's vicissitudes because of what I have gone through. And I find myself interestingly very able to adapt and pivot and prosper where other people might feel very trapped. And that is actually a very liberating feeling. And so like learning to recognize the value of like, instead of viewing what is like what your life is and, and the fact like I can't go to a grocery store without being recognized, that's either a something that's deeply debilitating or it's an opportunity for something. And so I'm always asking myself, well, what is the opportunity in this here is a challenge. What do I Make what is the best thing that I can make out of it. And that's really been the deep hardcore truth about living life that I. I feel very, very comfortable with, because I had.
- [56:29]
Rebecca Sebastian
I had to.
- [56:30]
Amanda Knox
Like, I had no choice. And so, like, a lot of stuff that people go to therapy for, for 30 years, like, I learned in a very short amount of time, and I'm very comfortable with. And it means that I can be comfortable with nuance, and I can hold complicated truths very comfortably in mind, even when they are in conflict with each other. And I think that that's something that is a very valuable skill in a world that is increasingly in conflict because people aren't able to hold conflicting truths at the same time. You know, like, that's. And so I spend a lot of time really trying to apply that wisdom to my everyday life and then just being grateful to be alive, because ultimately it comes down to that. Like, I survived my study abroad. I could be dead right now. And that never escapes me.
- [57:31]
Mike Kosper
One of the things I so appreciate about, you know, both the. The Hulu documentary and the show itself, and then having heard you talk about this in a number of different places already, is.
- [57:44]
It comes back to one of the reasons why I wanted to make this series. Like in the 1980s and 90s, a whole bunch of Christians, largely a bunch of Christians. It was broader than that, but largely a bunch of Christians, they fell into this fever dream that led to all of these people being falsely accused of cult activity and wild stuff. I mean, just dark and wild stuff. You also have, as you mentioned earlier, like, this whole industry of, like, social services people, psychologists and others who were coaching these kids into believing these horrific stories about what had happened to them. I think the most disturbing piece of tape that we have on this entire series is this tape from. It's a press conference that happened on the day that the daycare workers were acquitted. And it's the child victims who, you know, this is years later, after they have given their testimony. And then they've been part of this process for multiple years, multiple prosecutions, multiple trials.
- [58:46]
And they believe it's true. And they have every reason to believe it's true because all these people around them have told them that it's true. And the terror in their voices as they talk about, what does it mean that this person is going to be free, who they think is literally a Satanist who could levitate and fly around the room and transform into other things and was drinking blood and doing all this stuff.
- [59:10]
It's wild stuff. And and at the same time, like, I think there's also, I feel the same way about those kids that I feel about the West Memphis guys, same way I feel about you. It's like they're again, like the fever dream takes over and then it fades, right? Like this prosecutor retires, you know, the story leaves the press. People just stopped talking about satanic ritual abuse in the mid-90s and it just went away from American culture. But you.
- [59:41]
And those kids and the West Memphis guys, they're left to pick up the pieces. And we don't take any responsibility for the fact that we bought into the hype, we amplified the hype. We bought the books, we watched the talk shows, we fed this machine that caused such incredible wreckage. And so I think you telling your story the way you have is very helpful and very important. And I'm super grateful you would join us today.
- [60:10]
Amanda Knox
Oh yeah, no. And I think that to this day the Satanic panic really, really deserves a very nuanced, but also at the same time, like broad scope treatment and the way like the dopesick did with the epidemic or the opioid epidemic, because it really was an epidemic of his hysteria. And what's so interesting about it also is like that, you know, talk about like victims and perpetrators and how that gets confused. Like the victims become the perpetrators in the Satanic panic stories. But it's not their fault. They're children. They're children. And like how do you live with that? Knowing that like you put your dad in prison for 30 years for nothing. Like, how do you live with that? And who do you blame? And it's just so much bigger than, you know, a few bad apples.
- [61:10]
Mike Kosper
Devil in the Deep Blue Sea is a production of Christianity Today. It's hosted and written by Mike Kosper, produced by Mike Kosper and Rebecca Sebastian with production assistance from Dawn Adams. Sound design and mix engineering by TJ Hester. Sound design, animation and video by Steve Scheidler. Graphic design Nim Ben Rubin, Eric Petrick and Mike Kosper are executive producers of CT Media Podcasts. Matt Stevens is our senior producer. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review. Wherever you're listening, you'll have help more people find the show. Thanks for listening.
- [62:17]
Rebecca Sebastian
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- [62:19]
Amanda Knox
Very happy half off holiday because right.
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Rebecca Sebastian
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Russell Moore
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Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means a half day.
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Amanda Knox
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