A Murder, a Mystery, Amanda Knox Speaks

When college students set off to study abroad, they dream of adventures detailing exotic destinations filled with exquisite culture, romantic languages and rich food. Amanda Knox had the same fanciful reverie before moving to Italy, only her dream quickly turned into a nightmare after her roommate, Meredith Kercher, was murdered.

When the tragedy first emerged, our eyes were glued to the news station, waiting for the latest development in the mysterious Amanda Knox case. Now, the American exchange student accused of murdering her roommate in Italy is going back on trial for the third time. It's been six years since Knox, a Seattle native, dotted the media scene, and now she's back on it, only this time, instead of turning to CNN, Knox sat down with longtime journalists Diane Sawyer, speaking to the devastating story for the first time.

Amanda Knox became a household name when headlines circulated that she was accused of stabbing her English roommate, Meredith Kercher, who wanted to be a journalist like her father. Though Kercher's ambition would never be fulfilled in the way she intended - her story is still being written. She was brutally stabbed 47 times, found by another roommate in her Italian home. Knox was sentenced to prison for 26 years after being found guilty. But after three years in prison, she was released on an appeal. After recently completing a memoir titled Waiting to be Heard, Knox is heading back overseas, as Italy's Supreme Court ruled for the case to go back to trial.

During ABC's special program with Diane Sawyer, "A Murder. A Mystery. Amanda Knox Speaks," Knox recounted the story, allowing viewers to judge the alleged "she-devil" for themselves. During the hour-long segment, Knox's testimony seemed just as spotty as it did in the early trials, and the case is still as puzzling as it was six years ago.  

Knox's alibi on Nov. 1, the night of the murder, is that she was with her boyfriend, Harry Potter lookalike Raffaele Sollecito, at his house. "We had dinner. We watched a movie. We smoked. We had sex. We were together," Knox said. "I smoked a joint with Sollecito, and what that did to my memories was it made them less concrete, but it didn't black them out and it didn't change them. We stayed in the whole night."

However, Knox admittedly said she left her boyfriend's place to shower. When she arrived at her house, she found the front door ajar, which should have raised a red flag, but Knox brushed it off and continued to the bathroom. Despite there being blood on the bathmat in front of the shower, Knox showered, toweled off, and sauntered back to her waiting boyfriend. Especially after smoking marijuana, Knox should have been more paranoid than if she were sober, and her dismissiveness was only the start to everyone's exiguous concerns.

Even more people question why she was doing gymnastics at the police station, but during the interview, Knox set the record straight and said she never did cartwheels, only splits to stretch her legs after spending restless hours in the police station. "I did the splits, and that's once," she said.

Other discrepancies lie in her confession, which she also spoke to with Sawyer. "I didn't confess. I was interrogated. They acted like my answers were wrong. They told me I was wrong, that I didn't remember correctly, that I had to remember correctly. And if I didn't, I would never see my family," Knox said.  "I wasn't providing a lot of the detail," Knox said. "They were asking me if I had heard Meredith scream, and when I said I didn't remember, they said, 'How could you not remember that she screamed?' And I said, 'Okay, I guess I remember that she screamed.' It was all like that."

And after Knox named Patrick Lumumba the murderer, more red flags appeared than a game of RISK. Speaking to her 1,400 days in jail, Knox revealed that she contemplated suicide, stating: "I felt incredibly guilty for what they were having to sacrifice for me, and there was a certain point in my thinking in prison that if it didn't work out and I never was free again, I was trying to figure out how I could ask them to move on with their life without me because I was tired of them having to sacrifice everything for me."

There was, however, a turning point. Knox started to regain strength. She and her cellmate would sing The Star Spangled Banner every day, and, in her spare time, she learned a song from the prison chaplain and became fluent in Italian.

Since being freed from the Italian prison and moving back to Seattle, Knox is currently studying creative writing at the University of Washington and has a new boyfriend, whom she dated in high school. While Knox was in prison, he sent her a tracing of his hand so that she, "would always have a hand to hold."

Just when Knox thought she would be able to move forward, she is being brought back to her darkest days.  "I have to be ready to fight and defend myself," Knox concluded. Another trial may mean more of the same, or something new. Whatever it is, we'll be watching.