By PAN PYLAS Associated Press
LONDON (AP) — Amanda Knox, the American student convicted and later acquitted of the murder and sexual assault of her British roommate Meredith Kercher 19 years ago in Italy, is defending herself against accusations from Kercher’s sister that her comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland trivializes violence against women.
Knox, now 39, said Thursday in a post on Instagram that her show “honors Meredith Kercher’s memory and calls out the violence that was done to her and to me.”
The show is called “Cartwheel,” a reference to a story that claimed Knox did cartwheels in the police station after Kercher’s death. The show debuts Friday evening and is due to run for 11 straight nights at the annual mish-mash of stand-up, theater and musical offerings in the Scottish capital.
The show is being marketed as a woman “approaching forty, juggling motherhood and finally getting around to being furious about the whole wrongful-imprisonment thing. Especially when half the world is telling her to get over it, while the other half still thinks she’s guilty.”
Knox was a 20-year-old student in Perugia when Kercher was found stabbed to death on Nov. 2, 2007, in her bedroom in the apartment they shared with two Italian women.
The case made global headlines as suspicion quickly fell on Knox and her boyfriend of just days, Raffaele Sollecito. She served nearly four years in prison during the investigation, initial murder trial and when she was freed by an appeals court in Perugia. The couple were acquitted by Italy’s highest court in 2015.
Another man, Rudy Hermann Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was eventually convicted of murder after his DNA was found at the crime scene. He was freed in 2021, after serving most of his 16-year sentence.
Knox returned to the United States in 2011, after being freed by the appeals court in Perugia, and has since established herself as a global campaigner for the wrongly convicted. She has a podcast with her husband and last year published a memoir titled, “Free: My Search for Meaning.”
Knox’s post follows an interview that Meredith Kercher’s sister, Stephanie Kercher, gave to the BBC during which she said the show “normalizes and trivializes violence against women.”
While insisting that Knox is “naturally free to continue with her life as she wishes,” she said “the problem with this particular project is that it is comedy.”
“It’s not about whether people think she’s guilty or innocent, if someone else was doing the show specifically against Meredith, I would still feel the same, it is obviously an added wound that it’s coming from her at the same time, but I do feel very strongly that it should be something that’s not given a platform,” she said.
An online petition calling for the show to be canceled has been launched and so far has more than 4,400 signatories. It states that the show “mocks the horrific events surrounding Meredith’s murder and aims to somehow turn this tragedy into entertainment.”
Knox said “a petition to cancel a show no one has seen, on the grounds of false accusations intended to shame and vilify a wronged woman into silence, is not an argument against Cartwheel.”
The Edinburgh Fringe, she added, “is the perfect place for a show like this.”