The Shocking True Story Behind ‘The Twisted Tale Of Amanda Knox’

PERUGIA, ITALY – NOVEMBER 24: Amanda Knox is led away from Perugia’s court of Appeal by police officers after the first session of her appeal against her murder conviction on November 24, 2010 in Perugia, Italy. American Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the murder of Ms Knox’s former British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007. Their trial took place in December 2009 with Knox and Sollecito receiving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. Rudy Guede, an unemployed man from Ivory Coast, was also convicted of the Meredith Kercher’s murder. The case is also forming the basis for a film currently being shot in Italy entitled ‘The Amanda Knox Story’, with American actress Hayden Panettiere cast as Amanda Knox. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

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Amanda Knox is making headlines yet again, but this time, it’s for Hulu’s limited series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Whether you followed the story as it unfolded in the media or are just learning what happened, here’s everything you need to know about the infamous case, from the investigation to the convictions and acquittals.

The eight-part scripted drama stars Grace Van Patten as Knox, who was wrongfully imprisoned for murder weeks after arriving in Italy for her study abroad program. According to Hulu, the show “traces Amanda’s relentless fight to prove her innocence and reclaim her freedom, and examines why authorities and the world stood so firmly in judgment.”

Knox also serves as an executive producer on the project. “I’m a producer and a collaborator on the story,” Knox told the Seattle Times. “I’m not just a victim of the storytellers and at the mercy of the storytellers.”

The show takes viewers through Knox’s arrest, the controversial interrogation and the trial. Showrunner K.J. Steinberg told the publication that she first discussed the idea of the show with fellow EP Monica Lewinsky, wanting to focus on Knox the person rather than the figure created by Italian authorities and the media.

“It was very clear to me as soon as I met Amanda, read her memoir, but mostly looked into her eyes in our meeting and connected with her, that that warped version was a travesty unto itself,” Steinberg said.

Who Is Amanda Knox?

Amanda Knox is an American activist, author and journalist. In November 2007, when she was a 20-year-old student at the University of Washington, she went abroad to Perugia, Italy. She lived in a four-bedroom apartment on the ground floor with three other women, including Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student from the University of Leeds.

“It’s true that I didn’t know Meredith very well. I had only known her for a few weeks,” Knox wrote in her recent memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning. “That said, when you study abroad, you get to know people really quickly because both of us were new arrivals to Perugia. … I was 20. She was 21. She was studying journalism. I was studying languages.”

She continued, “And we both happened to rent a room in this beautiful little house overlooking the countryside. And it was perfect. It was that beautiful time of your life when everything is possible and you have every reason to expect to have beautiful experiences.”

On Oct. 25, 2007, Knox met Italian Raffaele Sollecito at a classical music concert, and they started dating. The 23-year-old Italian computer engineering student’s apartment was a short walk from the girls’ flat.

What Happened To Meredith Kercher?

On Nov. 2, 2007, Kercher was found dead in her bedroom in the apartment that she shared with Knox. According to Italian police, her body was partially clothed, with her throat cut. She was stabbed multiple times and was sexually assaulted.

When questioned by police, Knox told authorities that she’d spent the night of Nov. 1 at Raffaele’s house and returned home about 10:30 a.m. Friday morning. She noticed that the front door was open and there were spots of blood on the bathroom mat. Amanda said that she took a shower and then went to get her boyfriend; the police arrived at about 12:30 p.m.

What Did The Police Do During Amanda Knox’s Interrogation?

Shortly after Kercher was killed, Knox was subjected to 53 hours of interrogation from Italian authorities without a lawyer or an official translator. In January 2025, Knox penned an article for The Atlantic shedding light on her interrogation, which she called “the most terrifying experience of my life.”

“I was 20 years old, and was questioned for more than 53 hours over a five-day period in a language I was only just learning to speak. The night of Meredith’s murder, I had stayed with Raffaele Sollecito, a young man I’d just started dating. But no matter how many times I said that, the police refused to believe me,” she wrote.

What Did Amanda Knox Confess To Initially?

Knox recalled in The Atlantic that during the interrogation, she was “berated, threatened, lied to, and slapped, and eventually my sanity broke,” adding that she “began to believe the lies the police were telling me.”

Knox said that she agreed to sign statements placing herself and another innocent man in the house when the crime had occurred. Also during the interrogation, she accused Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba of killing Kercher. (Knox worked part-time at Lumumba’s bar.)

“I recanted only a few hours later, but it didn’t matter,” Knox wrote. “I was coerced into signing the statements and then charged with criminal slander for doing so. (The police, who did not record the interrogation as they were supposed to, deny that I was hit or pressured into making these statements.)”

The recantation Knox is referring to was a handwritten four-page statement in English in which she questioned the truthfulness of her previous testimony.

“In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make clear that I’m very doubtful of the veracity [sic] of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,” she wrote, per CBS News. “Not only was I told I would be arrested and put in jail for 30 years, but I was also hit in the head when I didn’t remember a fact correctly,” she said in the statement. “It was under this pressure and after many hours of confusion that my mind came up with these answers.”

What Happened At Amanda Knox’s Trial?

Prosecutors claimed Knox and her boyfriend murdered Meredith because she wouldn’t participate in a group sex game. According to NBC News, investigators found it suspicious that both Amanda and Raffaele turned off their cell phones at almost exactly the same time — 8:40 p.m. — on the night of the murder. However, The Gaurdian reported that in the final days of the trial, media sentiment in Italy shift in favor of the defendants “as their lawyers kept up an offensive on the forensic evidence linking them to the crime.”

Knox and Sollecito were convicted of murdering Kercher in 2009, with Knox receiving a 26-year prison sentence. Both served four years in an Italian prison before being found innocent in 2011 by an eight-member jury. Their acquittal came after serious questions emerged about the procedures used to collect DNA evidence, according to the BBC.

The court ruled that Knox’s initial testimony, which was typed by the police, would not be admissible as evidence in the retrial. Instead, only Knox’s handwritten notes were allowed as evidence, according to CBS News at the time.

Why Was The First Acquittal Reversed?

In March 2013, a retrial was ordered after prosecutors appealed that crucial DNA evidence had been left out, and the case was sent back to an appeals court in Florence. That court reinstated the original guilty verdict against Knox and Sollecito. As NPR reported in 2014, “The latest ruling reinstates the initial verdict and sentences Knox, who currently lives in Seattle, to 28 1/2 years in prison and is likely to set up a long battle over her extradition.”

Finally, in 2015, the convictions of Knox and Sollecito were definitively overturned by Italy’s highest court. The Court of Cassation found that the murder investigation had been flawed from the start.

According to The New York Times, the court noted that the “unusual media hype” and the international repercussions that accompanied the case from the moment Kercher, was found dead led to a “sudden acceleration” in the investigations to find potential suspects “to consign to the international public opinion,” which “certainly did not assist in finding the truth.”

What Is Amanda Knox’s Only Standing Conviction?

Although Knox was exonerated of the murder charges, she was unsuccessful in her efforts to overturn her slander conviction. In June 2025, Italy’s highest court upheld Knox’s conviction, which held a brief jail sentence.

She was found guilty of slander for falsely accusing her former boss, Patrick Lumumba, of killing Kercher. In 2023, an appeals court in Florence gave Knox a three-year sentence for wrongly accusing Lumumba. But because she had already served nearly four years, she is not at risk of any more jail time, according to VOA News.

“It’s a surreal day,” Knox wrote on X after the conviction was upheld. “I’ve just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn’t commit.”

Knox’s lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, also said that he was surprised by the conviction. “We cannot believe it. A totally unjust decision for Amanda and unexpected in our eyes,” he said. “We are incredulous.”

Meanwhile, Lumumba was happy with the verdict. “Amanda was wrong. This verdict has to accompany her for the rest of her life,” he told The Associated Press.

Who Killed Meredith Kercher?

While Knox was in prison, Italian investigators revealed they were looking for a fourth suspect in the stabbing. The man left a bloody left-hand print on a pillowcase found underneath Meredith’s head, and he also used the bathroom without flushing, leaving DNA evidence.

The bloody print was a match to Rudy Hermann Guede, a 20-year-old Ivorian native who has lived in Italy since the age of five. In statements to German authorities and to his lawyer, Guede admitted that he was in the flat with Meredith when she died. He said they’d made a date the night before, on Halloween, when she’d been dressed as a vampire. He claimed that the date at her house ended in consensual sex. He said that they went to bed, and he went down the hall to the bathroom, when he heard Meredith screaming. Not only was Guede’s DNA found in the victim, but it was also on her bra and in the house, per NBC News.

Where Is Rudy Guede Now?

Guede was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2008, but that verdict included a ruling that he did not commit the crime alone. His sentence was later reduced on appeal before he was released early for good behavior in 2021, according to CNN.

But Guede’s legal troubles are far from over. He is scheduled to appear in court in November 2025 on charges of sexual assault, mistreatment and stalking. These accusations come from his former girlfriend, whom he began dating while still in perison. According to Italian media, their relationship ended in 2023 when she filed charges against him.

The first two episodes of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox are streaming on Hulu. Watch the official trailer below.