Amanda Knox‘s memoir didn’t shy away from addressing the most challenging, intimate and even meaningful moments from her time in prison for a murder she didn’t commit.
Free: My Search for Meaning, which is out now, pulls back the curtain on Knox’s experience behind bars after being wrongfully convicted for Meredith Kercher‘s death. It also explores Knox’s journey to moving on and making peace with the events that made her an infamous public figure.
“This is not a response. This is a proactive approach to me thinking about and grappling with the ripple effects of this trauma that exploded my life,” Knox, 37, exclusively told Us Weekly about her decision to tell her side of the story. “[It is about] how I grappled with owning what’s mine, recognizing the mistakes that I made along the way and really trying to address what I think is a really interesting dilemma in the true crime world. It is this idea that human beings that you hear about in a true crime context only exist within that true crime context.”
Knox noted that usually people in high-profile true crime cases are forgotten about after making headlines, adding, “You hear about the crime, you hear about their arrest, you hear about the trials, you hear about how long they spent in prison, and then when they get out of prison, they’re out. They have their first hamburger after they get out of prison, and then it is the end of the story. You don’t often hear this incredible journey that they go on afterwards to be like, ‘Oh my God, now that I’ve proven my innocence, now what is my life?’”
In 2007, Knox’s life turned upside down when a study abroad trip to Italy ended with her being arrested for her roommate’s murder. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison after she and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were both convicted of the crime despite a lack of evidence.
An appellate court later found the former couple not guilty in 2011, but they were again found guilty three years later during a retrial. The Italian supreme court cleared Knox of Kercher’s murder in 2015, and she was exonerated. Ivorian migrant Rudy Guede was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for Kercher’s murder after his DNA was identified at the crime scene. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released from prison in November 2021.
After being released in 2011, Knox began a lengthy journey to not let the past define her. Instead, Knox used her experience to become an advocate for criminal justice reform and to fight for the rights of the wrongfully convicted.
“Writing has always been therapeutic for me. So I’ve been writing this book for many, many years. Some of the things that I incorporated into it were from pieces that I wrote ages ago — and all of them were about processing various aspects of this experience that I went through and trying to understand what they meant — if they meant anything,” Knox shared with Us. “Does it mean anything that a girl had a crush on me in prison and I had to navigate that weird awkward situation? Or does it mean anything to me — or to anyone that I trusted — that someone who told me he was a wrongly convicted person turned out to be a liar and I got taken advantage of in a very dangerous situation? Was that just stupid or is there something to that?”
She continued: “Was that experience a ripple effect of a trauma that originated when a young man broke into my home and raped and murdered my roommate? All of these things and how they connected is the really beautiful takeaway for me writing this. It was me realizing the relationships that I have with people after feeling so ostracized and singled out.”
In Free: My Search for Meaning, Knox reflected on her journey with a quote, writing, “I don’t need anyone else to speak for me. I can write my own damn quote. To be free is to be powerful, and if your power is kindness, you are always free. No one can stop you from being kind.”
Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations about her time behind bars — and Knox’s insight to Us about the takeaways:
The 1st Days Behind Bars
After being arrested in 2007, Knox was brought to an Italian prison where she was told to strip naked before a male doctor examined her body — including her genitals — while pointing out details for a photographer, which they reassured her was a routine search for signs of sexual violence.
Knox’s prison cell included a “steel bed frame painted pumpkin orange, a green foam mattress, and a coarse wool blanket.” She was originally kept in isolation for the duration of the investigation, which lasted for eight months. Knox had no access to common areas but wasn’t in solitary confinement.
Life in an Italian Prison
According to Knox, to wash her clothing meant using a bidet in the bathroom. She was initially not given any books — only scraps of magazines thrown out by other inmates. Knox ultimately learned Italian by acquiring a dictionary and translating a book she knew in English — Harry Potter to be specific — into another language.
“Aside from my three books, I wasn’t allowed much in my cell. Two pairs of shoes, five pairs of socks, two pens, one metal plate … In prison, everything you have is numbered. There was not much logic to the rules around possessions,” she wrote. “Though we were allowed to have a camp stove that produced an open flame, we couldn’t have nutmeg — presumably because a woman on the cellblock had tried to snort it. We could clean with bleach, but we were forced to wear socks on our hands when it got cold, because we weren’t allowed to wear gloves.”
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Making Due With the Food
Knox’s meals in prison consisted of instant coffee for breakfast. Lunch and dinner was “a starch, a veggie, and some meat.” The vegetables in prison were “bland and boiled to death.”
“The protein was usually more cartilage than meat and I could rarely tell what animal it had come from. I never touched it. As you can imagine, I lost weight. Without room to run around and without anything nourishing to delicious, I became a bit emaciated,” she noted. “Occasionally all we’d get were the leftovers from the men’s side of the prison. It was the same food, just cold by the time it arrived. Once they simply ran out of food, and we got nothing but bread. But we were allowed to buy food from the commissary.”
Prison Romance and Other Challenges
Knox, who has been married to Christopher Robinson since 2020, recalled an inmate developing a crush on her. The inmate, Lenny, didn’t accept her rejection and instead allegedly “swooped in and kissed” her.
“I didn’t feel in danger, but it was unwelcome, and I told her that since she couldn’t respect my boundaries, we couldn’t be friends anymore. It was tense after that,” she wrote. “I was relieved when she was finally released, though she often wrote to me.”
Elsewhere in the memoir, Knox detailed mandatory evening visits with prison chief Vice Commandante Argirò. She accused him of sexual harassment in addition to a male prison guard cornering her in a bathroom to try to force her to kiss him. (Argirò has since retired and denied the allegations in the past.)
Taking Back Control of Her Sexuality
“I waited until my cellmates were asleep. I moved with absolute silence, careful to not even rustle a blanket. I was clumsy at first and didn’t get anywhere near orgasm before the agente patrols. They came by every fifteen minutes or so to open the small cell windows and peer inside. But like many things in life, constraints can be useful,” Knox detailed about her attempts to reclaim her sexuality through masturbation. “The agente rotation forced me to figure out my body and find the right mental space efficiently. In those fleeting moments of pleasure, my body felt like my own again, but more important, I felt defiant. I was reclaiming something natural, healthy, and delightful, something my prosecutor had used as proof of my corrupt moral character.”
During her interview with Us, Knox recalled responses from first readers to her book.
“I remember one of my then was like, ‘Are you sure you want to talk about masturbating in prison? Are you sure you want to talk about going to Burning Man? Because no one needs to know that.’ TMI has certainly been an aspect of my experience where I have been eviscerated on the public stage for any small little thing,” she said. “And I’ve also had people prying into my private life and speculating about all of the intimate details of my life.”
Knox clarified she was “not embarrassed” about her experiences.
“I’m not embarrassed about my existence. I feel like by being really open and being really vulnerable and talking about legit ways that I’ve had to process my own sexuality over the course of all of this because I was vilified for my sexuality,” she explained. “I don’t feel like I ever put out anything gratuitously. I’m very purposeful in what I choose to share. But because my intimacy was so violated, that is part of what I’m having to process in a public way and in a way that I want to share publicly because I feel like a lot of people will be able to relate to what I’m talking about.”
She continued: “That’s what I think is a bigger driver as to choosing why or what to talk about is thinking about what I am experiencing. It doesn’t just belong to me. It is part of the human experience, and it is a universal question that we’re all asking. Part of it is exhibitionism because I don’t give a f—. And another part of it is very purposeful and thoughtful. This is a part of it. This is a part of my grief is having to process my sexuality because that was part of the story.”
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How Her Family Coordinated Visits
Knox was allowed six hours of visitation a month, and her family made sure they were always there. Her stepdad “spent months alone living in Italy” for the hour-long visits. Knox explained how she was “strip-searched before and after” each visit where she had to take her clothes off, spin around, squat and cough.
Struggling With Her Mental Health
After her conviction, Knox was put on suicide watch as a precaution. Knox admitted she had thoughts about taking her life while behind bars, which returned amid her retrial.
“I’m not in that place now. If I really look into myself, of course I’m not feeling suicidal ideation anymore,” Knox told Us about recalling her deteriorating mental health. “I am in a very different place. I have a family, I have children. What sparks for me is this realization of how I feel like what happened to me in Italy almost is a part of another life. A part of me literally died in prison in Italy and didn’t come back. This book is almost a sort of eulogy to her.”
Knox has since realized she did not go home “the same person” she was before her trip aboard.
“I’ve had to grieve for her alongside grieving this person who was my friend. I didn’t know Meredith for very long, but she was my friend,” she continued. “[It is about] recognizing that you really just have to let yourself grieve. Some people are really prone to pushing away hard feelings. I am of the opinion that looking directly at what hurts is actually the best way of staying mentally healthy.”
She added: “I have always found that going directly at what hurts and being really curious about it and being compassionate towards yourself as you are experiencing it has been the easiest way to maintain mental health. Weirdly, by going directly at these things, by remembering what hurts, by really going at it, I am actually doing the work that I need to do in order to be healthy instead of just pretending that it’s all behind me or I’m over it. I feel like I would be less mentally healthy if I hadn’t done that work.”
