The scenes that unfolded on a red carpet in New York this week were as glamorous as one might find at any film premiere. The designer gowns, the glossy hair, the artful smiles to a sea of cameras and microphones.
There, in the spotlight, posing with the panache of a pro, the star of the hour – not an actress or director – but a woman catapulted into public consciousness through tragedy: Amanda Knox.
Eighteen years ago, in the Italian city of Perugia, Amanda was arrested and charged with the murder of her British flatmate and fellow exchange student, Meredith Kercher.
Meredith, 21, had been living in the Umbrian capital for a matter of weeks when she was stabbed to death in November 2007, her body abandoned in a scene of incomprehensible violence, in the home she shared with two young Italian women – and Amanda.
Then, Amanda was a 20-year-old linguistics student from Seattle. In the glare of a far less comfortable array of cameras, she and her bespectacled Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of murder and spent four years in jail before being acquitted.
