A Decade Later: Amanda Knox Plans Her Return to the Scene of Meredith Kercher’s Murder

Amanda Knox says she wants to go back to Perugia 10 years after the murder of her roommate to “close the circle.” Why that might be the best thing for everyone.

Barbie Latza Nadeau

08.18.17 8:06 AM ET

DB

ROME—November will mark 10 years since British Erasmus student Meredith Kercher’s bruised and bloodied body was found in the Perugia apartment she shared with her American roommate Amanda Knox. The murder put the hilltop Umbrian town previously known primarily for its chocolate festival on a macabre murder map that scarred the city in immeasurable ways.

A decade later, Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who were both twice convicted and twice acquitted of Kercher’s murder, have carved out new lives, and Perugia has moved on. There are students at the local university for foreigners who have never even heard of Knox or Kercher or the horrific saga. 

But anniversaries often bring out feelings of nostalgia and, as it happens, Knox says she would like to return to Perugia to mark the end of the decade since the crime she has long denied being part of.

In an exclusive interview with People Magazine, Knox explains that going back to Perugia is a necessary step in her healing. “The only way that I’m going to come full circle is by physically, literally, coming full circle,” she told the magazine. “I know that Perugia is probably the least welcome place for me in the entire world. And that’s scary, but it also means a lot to me, not to be afraid of a place and see Perugia through my family’s eyes.”

In fact, Knox only lived freely in the city of Perugia for a few months before her arrest. Her only real point of reference is the apartment on Via Della Pergola where Kercher was killed, which has been completely renovated to remove any semblance of the previous layout. It was sold in 2015 and has since become a selfie stop for those who followed the crime closely, including Sollecito who was photographed by local media when he brought a new girlfriend there in 2014, the year before he and Knox were acquitted definitively by Italy’s highest court.

The rest of the time Knox spent in Perugia was in a prison outside of the city. Her family, instead, became permanent members of a community that never blamed them personally no matter what they might have thought of their daughter.

“They kept to themselves, they were humble,” Father Saulo Scarabattoli, the prison priest who Knox confided in during her imprisonment, told The Daily Beast. “The community accepted them and would welcome them back. They would be like old friends.”