Amanda Knox has announced that she would like to return to Italy to "face her fears", more than 10 years after her former flatmate, British student Meredith Kercher, was brutally killed.
Speaking at the Death Becomes Us True Crime festival in New York, Amanda told a crowd that she would like to return to Perugia as part of a "healing process".
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According to The Sun, the 31-year-old said: "It's very scary and every day you need to face up to something new that is terrifying but I've been lucky and I am healing.
"But you have got to face up to your fears alone if you want to heal and I know the main thing that still terrifies me most is returning to Italy."
"It's something I know I have to do and I will do it but it really does scare me... it's all still very raw there - people haven't moved on and I don't know how they would react to me."
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Amanda's talk at the true crime festival went down well with the audience, who took to Twitter to call her "genuine, kind and courageous" and to praise her "kindness and generosity".
Meredith, who was murdered aged just 21, was discovered locked inside her bedroom under a duvet. She was found to have suffered almost 50 stab wounds, and had bruises and injuries consistent with suffocation and sexual violence.
Amanda, along with her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted and then exonerated of the murder, which took place in 2007.
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Now living back in the USA after spending time imprisoned in Italy, Amanda's been hard at work campaigning to help other wrongfully accused people and talking about the problems with true crime, wrongful convictions and media sensationalism in her controversial podcast The Truth About True Crime.
In an interview with Vulture, Amanda explained that she could bring a unique perspective to a true crime podcast, having been "at the centre of a story that tantalises and entertains people" and having been given "true-crime diagnosis from psychologists who are hundreds of miles away from me".
Amanda said she does not want to be remembered as "that girl who was wrongly accused of murder", saying that she "just happened to be Meredith's flatmate" and that she struggled with the worry of being "forever associated with murder and wrongful conviction".
"This was all stuff that just happened to me that I had nothing to do with. It's so surreal and weird to have that be some kind of legacy that I carry with me when it really just happened to me," she said in the interview. "I didn't want to come out of this experience hating people and hating society and hating the media and hating the criminal justice system. I don't want that to be my life. I want to be something positive."
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It was also interesting to read Amanda's views on Nick Pisa, the Daily Mail journalist in Netflix's Amanda Knox documentary, who came across as a villain desperate for a good story regardless of the truth.
Amanda said the controversial journalist came across as a "hoot" in the Netflix film, saying he "doesn't feel responsible for how his articles affected my life" and that to an extent she agrees with his point of view.
"He feels that he's a part of a system that requires speed and delivery, and you write one article that says she's guilty and one article that says she's innocent and you immediately publish it as soon as the verdict comes out, and you have all these fake, made-up things about Amanda crying or Amanda cheering or whatever.
"He's a part of this system, and he doesn't feel responsible as being a cog in that system - and I look at that and I go, 'You're an asshole, but also you're kind of right.'
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"Everyone does have a personal responsibility when they are a small piece of a larger system, but he is right that he alone changing this behavior wouldn't necessarily have changed the outcome for me."
If you're interested in finding out more about the case, Netflix's Amanda Knox is a must for anyone interested in true crime and for learning about the finer details about what happened and who was responsible.
Featured Image Credit: NetflixTopics: Life News, Real, TV Entertainment, Netflix
