“I credit my dad for pushing me to do well in school and try my best to work hard.”
How does a mother tell their toddler daughter that they were once wrongfully convicted of murder?
For Amanda Knox, the subject of one of the most famous wrongfully convicted cases of the 2000s, the answer was simple: avoid hiding it and, instead, choose an honest, straight-forward approach.
And that’s exactly what she did with her 4-year-old daughter Eureka.
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While she hoped to not have that conversation until Eureka was at least six, Knox told Today.com that her daughter’s curiosity resulted in having the conversation earlier than expected.
So, when Amanda Knox’s daughter, who was three years old at the time, asked, “Hey Mommy, tell me the story of when Mommy went to Italy,” Knox opted for honesty.
“When Mommy was young, Mommy went to Italy, and she made friends and she had fun,” Knox recalled of the conversation.
“But then someone hurt her friend, and the police thought Mommy hurt her friend, and so they put Mommy in jail. And Mommy was in jail for a long time, and she was very sad,” she continued.
“Then one day, Mommy proved that she was innocent and she got to go home, and then she met your daddy and had you and happily ever after,” she concluded.
That story pretty much sums up the Amanda Knox case, which resulted in her being wrongfully accused of and wrongfully convicted of murdering her then-roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy in 2007, per ABC News.
Knox’s initial conviction came in 2009 when she was sentenced to 26 years in prison, according to Famous Trials. Her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was also convicted and sentenced.
While their wrongful convictions were overturned in 2011, Italian courts convicted them again in 2014 before overturning them a second time in 2015.
Instead, a man named Rudy Guede was found guilty of sexual assaulting and murdering Kercher in 2008. He served 13 years in prison before being released in 2021, according to The Guardian.
Amanda Knox’s story will be documented in a new Hulu series titled, “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.”
Amanda Knox shares how motherhood changed her perspective on her conviction
While talking to Today, Knox opened up about how becoming a mother has helped her overcome the memories of her conviction — which still follow her more than 10 years later.
"I think that I've always been amazed, first of all, just by how much being a mom has helped me process this terrible experience," she told the outlet.
"But also, even just telling this story to her, sometimes my daughter wants to play pretend the story of 'Mommy goes to Italy,'" she added.
Knox went on to admit that her daughter sometimes finds bars at the playground and pretends that she’s “Mommy in jail.”
According to Knox, she doesn’t view it as a “traumatic experience,” but rather a game.
“It can also be a game that me and my daughter can play with each other," she explained to Today. "It's just that lightness of being a child that really helps me carry the weight of it."
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The first two episodes of “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox” will premiere on Hulu on Aug. 20, per ABC. The remaining six episodes will drop every Wednesday until the series finale on Oct. 1.
