Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir

by Amanda Knox

  I felt I had only myself to blame. If I’d had the will to stick to the truth during my interrogation, I would never have been put in jail. My imprisonment was my fault, because I’d given in to the police’s suggestions. I’d been weak, and I hated myself for it.

  I sank to a new level of helplessness. Now I understood that no amount of explanation to the police or memoriali would clear things up. My fate was wholly dependent on the investigators. I wouldn’t be released until the prosecution finished analyzing the evidence. Only then would they realize that I hadn’t been at all involved in the murder.

  Thank God I can count on my innocence to save me!

  When they came to see me that afternoon, however, my lawyers weren’t optimistic about a quick resolution. Likely they worried that I was stashed away in prison so the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, could steer the investigation in whatever direction he chose.

  I veered between hope and despair. My life was in limbo. I couldn’t do anything more to explain myself to the prosecution. I couldn’t go back to school. I couldn’t even ask Raffaele why he’d changed his story. I couldn’t go home for Christmas. I felt as if the lights were going out. Sitting on my bed, hugging my knees, I thought, I can’t spend a whole year here. I’ll die.

  Part Two

  CAPANNE I

  Chapter 15

  November 10–13, 2007

  The person I most needed to see was sitting alone at a wooden desk. Mom. Her straight hair fell limply around her face. As always, she was picking at her fingernails. I knew without looking that they were chewed raw, her reaction to anxiety. As soon as I walked into the small room, she stood, rushed toward me, and started crying, mirroring the relief I felt at having her in front of me.

  Her face radiated concern and love, a look I’d seen when I came to her with a broken heart, or didn’t do as well as I’d hoped on a test, or volunteered that I’d tried marijuana. Her empathy and advice always made me feel on safe ground. I didn’t really get into trouble in high school, but I knew that if I did, she would support me through the situation. When I was at odds with myself, she’d reassure me that I was worthy of a happy life.

  Now my no-questions-asked, I’ll-come-help-you-wherever-you-are mother sat across from me in an empty room in Capanne Prison. This time she couldn’t just make it all go away. She couldn’t do anything but comfort me.

  After being separated first by an ocean and two continents and then by prison bureaucracy, walls, and bars, we hugged each other so tightly there was no space between us. Mom forced a smile, but tears rolled down her cheeks and into my hair as she nuzzled me. “Oh, my baby, my baby!” she whispered. “I love you so much. I’ve felt sick from needing to see you.”

  Holding me, she asked, “Are you all right? They say you told them you were there, that you were with Patrick. There are all these awful stories about you. Where are all these rumors coming from? Tell me everything.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry,” I moaned. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  I had so much to explain. After four days of being ordered around and ignored, I was finally in front of the one person who had always listened. But I worried that the overwhelming need I’d felt to tell the police what they wanted to hear wouldn’t make sense to anyone who had never been pushed so far. How could I explain it to her when I didn’t even understand it myself? More than anything, I needed my mother to believe me.

  When we finally let go of each other, I pushed two chairs close together, fortunate that the agente observing us was less strict than some about letting visitors and inmates sit side by side. Like every room in the prison so far, this one was freezing. Mom held my hands in her lap and rubbed them. I knew the particular feeling of her hands—the only adult hands I’d ever come across as small as mine, but always warmer. She looked at me as though she were trying to absorb me into herself. Her face was strained from attempting to hold back tears. It tortured me to see Mom so upset and to know that I was the cause of it. But even troubled, her expressions—more familiar to me than my own face—were soothing.

  I went through my interrogation with her step by step—the repeated questions, the yelling, the threats, the slaps. I explained to her how terrified I’d felt.

  “I didn’t come up with those things on my own,” I said. “I told them I’d been with Raffaele all night at his apartment. But they demanded to know whom I’d left to meet, who Patrick was, if I had let him into the villa. They insisted I knew who the murderer was, that I’d be put in jail for thirty years if I didn’t cooperate.”

  “Amanda,” she said, her eyes wide, “I can’t believe you had to go through that by yourself.”

  I told her that I had signed the witness statements out of confusion and exhaustion, that as soon as I had a few minutes by myself, I realized that what I’d said under pressure might be wrong. “I thought I could fix my mistake by explaining it in writing,” I said. “Instead, they arrested me.”

  Mom listened, pulling me close. There was never a moment when it seemed that my words weren’t reaching her.

  When I finally finished, I got up the courage to ask her the question that had made me panic every time I’d thought about it. What will I do if she says no or “I’m not sure”?

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. I was afraid to look her in the eye. “Do you believe me?”

  I could see her surprise—then her sadness. “Of course I believe you! Oh, honey, how could I ever not?”

  The immense burden I’d been carrying by myself lifted. I felt light-headed with relief. It was the first time since before my arrest that I’d talked to someone who knew I was innocent, who believed in me. I had longed to hear that for days—from anyone! Of course it came from the most important person in my life.

  There was one more question I was burning to ask. “How did you even know I was in prison? How did you know where to find me? They refused to let me pick up my phone when you called me. They wouldn’t let me call you back.”

  “A friend of Chris’s phoned the house after you were arrested,” Mom said, tearing up again. “That’s how he found out. My original flight to Rome was cancelled, and I’d just landed in Zurich when he called me. I just didn’t believe it. As soon as we hung up, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Then I had to call your father. It was the middle of the night in Seattle. I hated to leave such horrible news in a voice mail for him to wake up to, but I didn’t have any choice. I had to let him know.

  “I was frantic to get to you. And all I could do was wait in the airport for hours for a new flight to Rome. I didn’t get to Perugia until about three A.M. By then you were already in jail. I was hysterical.”

  Since the hearing, I’d realized that she couldn’t mamma-bear me out of prison. “Now I’ll have to stay here until the prosecutor figures out there isn’t any evidence against me—that I wasn’t at the scene of Meredith’s murder.”

  Mom squeezed my hands reassuringly. “I promise everything’s going to be okay, Amanda. It’s not your fault that the police scared you—you tried to fix things.”

  The agente opened the door. “It’s time to go, Knox,” she said. She pronounced my name the way all the prison officials did: “Kuh-nok-ks.” It sounded as if they were trying to mimic the noise a hammer makes when dropped.

  Mom held me tightly for half a minute more. We both were crying, but I felt so much better for having seen her. I didn’t beg to stay with her longer, because I knew the answer would be no. Just asking would probably get me into trouble.

  “I’ll be back in a few days—as soon as they let me,” Mom said. “Carlo and Luciano will come talk to you again, and your dad is flying over. This is all a big misunderstanding, and it will get fixed. We’ll be here with you for as long as it takes. We’ll get through this together. I love you so much.”

  I was led back to my cell, but my heart had lifted.

  It is only recently that my mom confessed how wrenching our reunion was for her. Her words were
barely coherent—just a rush of feeling: “Walking out of the prison without you that first time and many other times afterward was the hardest walking ever in my life—torture.”

  Three days later, my mom and dad came to colloquio—visiting hour—together. I remember thinking, when I walked in and saw them, Things must really be bad if Dad’s here.

  By then it wasn’t as if I hadn’t realized how much trouble I was in. But to see my father there added to the shock. I wasn’t accustomed to having him involved in the nitty-gritty of my life.

  My arrest had obviously shaken him. He seemed more tentative than I was used to. He didn’t cry when I walked in, but he choked up and held me for a long time before letting go. He kept clearing his throat. His eyes were strained and red.

  This was Dad’s first trip outside the United States and the second time the three of us had sat down at a table together. I was a child again. My parents were making major decisions for me—and I knew the $4,800 I had left in the bank couldn’t make up for the cost of two last-minute tickets from Seattle to Rome and the bills I was sure the lawyers were beginning to rack up.

  My imprisonment didn’t change the dynamic between Mom and Dad. They didn’t suddenly seem like close friends. They didn’t show affection for each other. They both focused on me. But it made me swell with love for my parents to see that even though they were marked by their failed marriage, they were able to create a united front. They’d arranged this visit together. They were talking to Luciano and Carlo together. Inside an impersonal prison—stark white walls, harsh fluorescent lighting, a gray metal filing cabinet, and a cartoon drawing of Umbria—with a guard watching the clock, our time together didn’t feel nearly as forced as our lunch at that café in Seattle. The three of us were sitting on the same side of the table, our chairs squeezed as close together as possible. I was in the middle, with each parent gripping one of my hands.

  Capanne made eight hours available for visitors each month—on Tuesdays and Saturdays—but the prison allowed each prisoner only six visits. This infuriated my parents, who wanted to be there each time the prison was open to outsiders. It made me crazy, too. Eventually Carlo and Luciano were able to arrange eight colloqui a month, and sometimes nine, by pleading with the prison authorities that my family had to come so far to see me. Even with the bumped-up hours, the amount of time I was able to spend with the people I loved was such a tiny fraction of the thousands of hours I was locked up, trapped among strangers.

  What my family ultimately managed to do for me, while living nearly six thousand miles away, was incredible. I’m sure I had more support than most of the inmates, including the ones who grew up down the street from Capanne. There was hardly a time that someone—Mom, Dad, or Chris—wasn’t there, unless they’d arranged for an aunt, uncle, or friend to sub in.

  There was nothing pleasant in it for them. They rented a tiny apartment in the countryside, about ten miles away from Capanne, left their spouses and my sisters, put their lives on hold, and took turns staying in Italy for weeks at a time. They didn’t speak the language or know another soul. They came to Perugia for one reason: to see me for one hour, two times a week.

  Without them, I think I would have had a complete breakdown. I would not have been able to survive my imprisonment.

  Before my parents left together that first time, Mom grasped my hands again, leaned toward me, and, tears brimming, said urgently, “Amanda, I’d do anything to take your place. Your job now is to take care of yourself. I’m worried for you being here.”

  Her words underscored what we all knew: that while my parents had my back, they couldn’t take care of me from day to day. I had to navigate prison alone. For other prisoners, the key to survival was to find someone to bond with, and that person would protect you and guide you through. But there was no one like me, no one I could confide in, no one whom I could trust to take me under her wing.

  Chapter 16

  November 9–14, 2007

  The best part of my day was the few seconds between waking and remembering. During that moment, with my eyes not yet open, I was in my cozy lemon yellow room at Mom’s house in Seattle. I was happy.

  Then I’d remember that I was locked in a cold cell where the radiators were turned on for only a few hours a day. And panic would overtake me. How can I be in prison? How can I be accused of something so horrible? It seems impossible. Yet here I am.

  Getting up, I’d look out the barred window and envy the rabbits hopping across the empty, dank fields. I wasn’t even exactly sure where Capanne was—all I knew was that it was somewhere between Perugia and Rome.

  Some days I felt as if I were in limbo, because I wasn’t able to connect to the real world. I was adrift. Mom and Dad were my anchors, and I measured time by their visits. Two days until they’re here. Four days until they can come back.

  In spite of all that had happened, I believed that the police, the prosecutor, a judge—some official—would look at the facts and realize how wrong they’d been. They’d be jolted by the obvious: that I was incapable of murder. Surely someone would see that there was no evidence. My belief that my imprisonment was temporary was all that kept me from being overwhelmed. I guess my faith in eventual justice is what psychologists call a coping mechanism.

  In the days after Meredith’s death I’d insisted on staying in Perugia. Back then, going home meant defeat. But my wants flipped with my arrest. Now the only thing that mattered was to reclaim my life in Seattle. I considered what I would do once my ordeal was over—how I’d rebuild myself, whether I’d live with Mom or find a place of my own, whether I’d go back to school or get a job, how much I wanted to reunite with the people I loved.

  I was determined not to settle in at Capanne. I saw that as a victory for the officials who thought I was guilty. I told myself I’d leave no trace of having been there; I’d carry out only what I’d carried in—a lesson my family had taught me when we went camping. In my mind, I was camping. This is no more permanent than a week in the mountains, I told myself. My only possessions were the few impersonal supplies that came in the garbage bag I was handed the first night and a few utilitarian items from the nuns’ closet—sheets and a stiff bath towel. I was determined to make do. The idea of getting comfortable was terrifying.

  Mom begged me to tell her what I needed. “To leave this place,” I said. But knowing I couldn’t, I asked for a couple of pairs of underwear and a few T-shirts.

  A guard gave me an order form for groceries and other basics—ranging from salt to sewing needles—and a libretto, an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch piece of paper folded in half with a handwritten spreadsheet inside to track what I spent. I had two hundred euros—about three hundred dollars—in my prison account from the purse/book bag they’d impounded upon my arrival. The order form was divided into three columns for the name of the item, the code number, and the quantity. Gufa badgered me to buy her a camp stove and a coffeemaker, but I refused to order so much as a carton of milk. I’d be gone before it reached its expiration date.

  Getting me out of jail was the first priority whenever I talked to Carlo and Luciano. Their take was that when the media frenzy died down in a couple of weeks, a judge would probably put me under house arrest, either with my family or in a religious community. Then, when the prosecution saw they had no evidence against me, they would let me go.

  As the days crept by, though, I renegotiated my deal with myself. Amanda, you’re going to need a few things. Buying won’t mean you’re staying.

  I filled in the columns for a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a hairbrush.

  A few days later a short, thin young woman dressed as an adolescent—in jeans, a sweatshirt, and Miss Piggy sneakers—brought me my order, passing it through the meal slot in the bars. One of the items completely baffled me. “No, no,” I said, realizing what it was. “I want it for the hair.”

  “Oh,” she said. She laughed good-naturedly and showed the guard my mistake. I was mortified, as I always was, when my ig
norance tripped me up.

  In filling out the order form, I’d requested a men’s shaving brush—a spazzola da barba—instead of a spazzola per i capelli.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll see if I can exchange it,” she offered.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You’re so kind to prisoners.”

  She laughed heartily this time and caught Lupa’s eye. “Fanta is a prisoner,” Lupa explained to me. “All the workers you see are prisoners.”

  It wasn’t just the language that threw me. Almost every aspect of life at Capanne was foreign. (The garbage bag I’d been given upon my arrival hadn’t come with a prison “user’s manual.”) Gufa quickly nicknamed me “Bimba”—“little girl.” She said it in a playful way, but at the same time it underscored how clueless I was.

  I was at the mercy of my jailers. I had no idea what to anticipate or how to act. What should my relationship with other prisoners, guards, prison officials, be? How open could I—or should I—be and with whom? As naïve as I now realize this was, when guards and prison officials, psychologists and doctors, asked me about myself, I didn’t know if I was allowed to keep my thoughts private or if I always had to tell them exactly what was on my mind.

  I wondered about the basic rhythm of things. How was I supposed to wash my clothes? How did I perform the essential routines of daily life? And whom should I ask? I found out that in order to get an appointment with the prison comandante, to buy anything that wasn’t on the grocery list, to switch out clothing or books in the storage room, to get a prison job, to pass your belongings on to another prisoner, to change cells—for nearly everything—you had to fill out a domandina, to ask permission.