Read Amanda Knox's Letter to Court Insisting on Her Innocence
Dec. 17, 2013— -- Amanda Knox wrote an impassioned letter to the Italian court trying her for the murder of her roommate today, telling the court that she was "afraid" to return to Italy for the trial, but insisting that "I am not a murderer."
Knox's five page letter may be her most comprehensive defense of her innocence in the death of Meredith Kercher, her English roommate who was found in the Perugia cottage they shared in 2007 with her throat slashed.
In her letter, Knox tells the court she has not returned to Italy for the trial because she fears the prosecutor's "smoke and mirrors will blind you."
Read Amanda Knox's Letter to the Italian Court Insisting on Her Innocence
She notes that she and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have already been convicted once of Kercher's killing. She spent four years in an Italian prison until an appeals court threw out the conviction in 2011. Last year, Italy's supreme court ruled that a new trial must be held, claiming the appeals court did not properly consider certain evidence.
Knox's lawyers made their summations in the third murder trial today and submitted her letter as part of its defense. A verdict in the case is expected in January.
In her letter, Knox argues that the evidence indicates she is innocent, partly because none of her DNA was found at the scene of Kercher's murder. She recounts the lengthy interrogation that she says resulted in a coerced statement that implicated her in Kercher's death, which she quickly tried to recant.
Her quirky behavior in the days after the killing in which she and Sollecito cuddled, was not an indication of a cold killer, but of her distress. "When I needed comfort Raffaele embraced me," she wrote.
Knox also denies prosecution claims that there was hostility between herself and Kercher. "Meredith was my friend... She never gave me so much as a dirty look," she wrote.
Knox told the court, "I am not a psychopath," and lists the names and adjectives she has been called by prosecutors: "Conniving, manipulating, man-eater, narcissist, enchantress, duplicitous, adulterer, drug addict, an explosive mix of drugs, sex and alcohol, dirty, witch, murderer, slanderer, demon, depraved, imposter, promiscuous, succubus, evil, dead inside, pervert, dissolute, psychopath, a wolf in sheep's clothing, rapist, thief, reeking of sex, Judas, she-devil, Luciferina..."
"This is fantasy," she concludes.
Knox ended her letter by writing that the prosecution insists on trying her for a third time because "they cannot bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, that they've made a terrible mistake."
