Amanda Knox returns to Italy for the first time & breaks down as she relives murder trial

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ROME (Reuters) - Amanda Knox, back in Italy for the first time since her 2015 murder acquittal, broke down in tears on Saturday as she relived her eight-year ordeal of trials and imprisonment, and the media frenzy surrounding it.

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Speaking at a conference on criminal justice in the northern Italian city of Modena, Knox said she had considered suicide while in jail, and she blamed the media for its treatment of her and her trial, which was closely followed around the world. “To the world, I wasn’t a suspect innocent until proven guilty, I was a cunning, psychopathic, dirty, drugged-up whore who was guilty until proven otherwise,” she told the audience.

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“The prosecutors and the media created a story and a version of me that suited that story, on which people could attach all their fantasies, fears and moral judgments... the dirty, psychopathic man-eater Foxy Knoxy.” Knox, now 31, returned to the United States after Italy’s top court annulled her conviction for the 2007 murder of her British flatmate in the town of Perugia, capping nearly a decade of courtroom drama during which she was twice found guilty.

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Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, is serving a 16-year sentence for the crime, but judges in the previous trials ruled he did not act alone. “Lots of people think I am crazy to come here,” Knox said. “I’m afraid today, I am afraid of being harassed, of being trapped, and I am afraid that new accusations will be made just because I have come here to give my version of the facts.” The Kercher family’s lawyer said her return to Italy was “inappropriate” self-promotion. But Knox insisted Kercher was her friend and her only intention was to draw attention to miscarriages of justice and the risks of an irresponsible media.

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