How Amanda Knox went from convicted murderer to wholesome married mum (2024)

Amanda Knoxhas been in the public eye for 17 years since the murder of her then roomate, British student Meredith Kercher, in the Italian city of Perugia in November 2007.

Seattle-nativeKnox, who was dubbed 'Foxy Knoxy' after it was revealed to be her nickname on MySpace,was imprisoned inItalyfor four years until her successful appeal in 2011 which saw her return to her home in Seattle.

In absentia, Knox was retried for the murder in 2013 and convicted again. It was not until 2015 when Italy's highest court of appeal found that the case was 'without foundation' that she was finally cleared of any role in Kercher's murder.

Knox returned to the headlines this week as she sought to clear her name once more in relation to the slander charges she was found guilty of in 2009, separate from her murder conviction. A Florence court found her guilty once more but her sentence is covered by time served.

Following her legal troubles, Knox sought to rebuild her life away from her Italian trauma, first enrolling in college and marrying quirky author Christopher Robinson. She's is a mother of two and is also an advocate for the wrongfully imprisoned.

The couple lives in the Seattle-area where they're raising their daughter, Eureka, born in 2020, and son, Echo. Knox and Robinson regularly update fans about their family's activities through their podcast and on Instagram.

When she returned to the US in 2011, Knox, then 24, also returned to the University of Washington, where she had been a linguistics student prior to her Italy move.

This time she took up creative writing. She later became an arts columnist of a small newspaper called the West Seattle Herald.

In 2015, she began dating writer Christopher Robinson as she was writing a review of his book,War of the Encyclopaedists . The couple was living together by 2016 and publicly announced they were married in 2018 having wed in private.

Knox said that the decision to tie the knot was more about 'taxes and insurance' rather than for romantic reasons.

In the same year she met Robinson, Knox was also briefly engaged to a New York City-based musician named Colin Sutherland.

'I don’t want to get married for the sake of getting married. My hope is that I have a partner with whom I can continue to take on the world ... and feel like he is my partner,' Knox toldPeople in 2017.

However, in a 2018 video Robinson shared his proposal with the world.

'I had been thinking about this, but it’s … already happened in the future … it’s happening now … I don’t have a ring, but I do have a big rock.Will you stay with me until the last star in the last galaxy burns out and then even after that? Amanda Marie Knox, will you marry me?,' he said.

Knox answered affirmatively and they shared a kiss, marrying a month later and then holding a larger celebration later.

Their wedding was outer-space themed with Knox replicating Carrie Fisher's iconic look from Star Wars with her hair in large buns.

During her People interview, Knox said that she felt Robinson would be a 'wonderful dad.' Their first child, Eureka Muse Knox-Robinson, arrived in October 2021. Knox disclosed that prior to the birth, she suffered miscarriages.

Knox once said that in the wake of the media scrutiny that she has suffered, the couple chose to keep little Eureka out of the spotlight, occasionally showing just the back of her head in posts on social media.

Their second child, son Echo, was born in September 2023 just a month after Knox announced her pregnancy. An Instagram post with the caption: 'Pregspreading,' was how she made the announcement.

Knox's memoir, Waiting to be Heard, was published in 2013, for which she was paid $3.8 million up front by Harper Collins. Most of the money was used to pay off her legal fees, her husband told People in 2017.

'She paid back her parents and grandma, who took out mortgages to move to Italy during her case and pay her lawyers. And she still has massive legal bills,' he added.

In 2016, Netflix produced the Emmy-nominated documentary Amanda Knox, which she appeared in. The development of the film began in 2014 but took two years to produce.

'We kind of gave her the decision to make on her own ... and she decided she didn’t want to do it at first.It took her two years to decide that she was ready to tell her story. She called us up and said: "I would like to talk,"' director Rod Blackhurst told Chelsea Handler in a 2016 interview.

Knox spoke very positively about the end result as she felt she was given the opportunity to 'present [herself] as not just a villain or caricature.'

In 2019, Knox returned to Italy for the first time since her acquittal to speak at conference hosted by the Innocence Project. Her panel was titled Trial by Media.

'To the world, I wasn’t a suspect innocent until proven guilty, I was a cunning, psychopathic, dirty, drugged-up w---- who was guilty until proven otherwise,' she told the audience.

During a 2016 interview withNightline, Knox conceded that there was no way that she could ever get back the life she had before Kercher's murder.

'I’m forever marked ... and the important thing moving forward is just acknowledging that, and acknowledging that I’m not the only one.'

'I’m going to take ownership of the fact that I’m an exoneree and I’m going to share the fact that there is a voice to be heard,' she went on.

Knox grew up in the Pacific northwest in a middle class household alongside two sisters. Her father, Curt Knox, was an executive with department store chain Macy's and her mother, German born Edda Mellas, was a maths teacher.

Her parents split in 1989 when she was ten, her mother remarried to a an IT consultant named Chris.

Knox was an accomplished soccer player in her youth, it was her speed that earned her the moniker 'Foxy Knoxy.'

It was her mother who sparked her love of Italy, taking her there on a vacation when Knox was 15 and giving her a copy of the book, Under the Tuscan Sun.

Before leaving to study in Italy in 2007, Knox had been a student at the University of Washington, studying linguistics.

Her father had been against her Italy move, believing his daughter to be too naïve.

Despite her skepticism about the media, Knox has embraced a role in it. In 2018, she began her online series The Scarlet Letter Reports where she interviewed figures such as Amber Rose about their depictions.

Knox also launched a podcast titled The Truth About Crime which was made in coalition with SundanceTV and highlighted cases involving wrongful convictions and the role the media played in them.

She told Vultureat the time that the point of the podcast was to show 'what it means to be at the center of a story that tantalizes and entertains people.'

The European Court of Human Rights awarded Knox $21,000 in damages in 2019, ruling that her initial interrogations by Italian police had been unlawful and that she was denied legal advice as well as an interpreter for 53 hours.

'I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days, without a lawyer, in a language I understood maybe as well as a ten-year-old.When I told the police I had no idea who had killed Meredith, I was slapped in the back of the head and told to "Remember!,"' she wrote in a New York Times columnabout the ruling.

'I never should have been charged, much less convicted, of slander.'

Knox's slander charges have been ongoing for nearly 15 years.

At the time of her arrest over Kercher's murder, Knox pointed the finger at her boss, Congolese bar ownerPatrick Lumumba. Once again, Knox found herself convicted of the charge but her sentence is covered by time served.

In exclusive interviewwith DailyMail.com, Lumumba said that he was overjoyed by the verdict. Meanwhile, Knox's attorneys say that she is distraught by the court's decision.

In the wake of the killing, Italian investigators were quick to point the finger at Knox, then 20, and her Italian boyfriend,Raffaele Sollecito, then 23. The alleged motive was a sordid sex game that went awry.

Kercher, 21, had been found almost naked with her throat cut.

Knox returned to the headlines this week as she sought to clear her name once more in relation to the slander charges she was found guilty of in 2009. An Italian court found her guilty once more but her sentence is covered by time served.

Back in 2007, Knox was put in trial in both Italian courts and the court of public opinion. She was found guilty of murder and imprisoned in Italy for four years until her successful appeal in 2011 which saw her return to her home in Seattle.

Charges were brought again in 2013 but was once again cleared by Italy's Supreme Courtin 2015.