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Facts about:
 —The bathmat footprint
 —Mixed DNA
 —The alleged cleanup
 —Luminol tests
 "The case against Knox has so many holes in it, and is so tied to the career of a powerful Italian prosecutor who is under indictment for professional misconduct, that any fair-minded jury would have thrown it out months ago."spacer
— Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times columnist Timothy Egan (Note: On January 22, 2010, the prosecutor to whom Egan refers, Giuliano Mignini, was convicted of abusing his authority and sentenced to 16 months in prison. He remains free pending his appeal.)

Click here to watch American Girl, Italian Murder: The Verdict online. This program was aired on December 5. It is part of CBS's 48 Hours Mystery series, which is put together by people with extensive experience investigating and reporting on high-profile crimes. They were among the first to recognize that Amanda is the victim of a legal travesty, and they have done an outstanding job of covering this case. We encourage Amanda's supporters to leave positive feedback at the CBS website.


A heartfelt thanks for your support


On behalf of Amanda and her family, we want to thank everyone who has contacted FOA to express their concern and to offer help in the wake of an unjust and unsupportable guilty verdict. We are developing a strategy to raise public awareness of this case and help bring about a reversal of the verdicts against both Amanda and Raffaele. Once it is in place, we will welcome all the help we can get, and we will be in touch with you.

You can reach us at info@friendsofamanda.org.

We encourage American supporters to help by thanking Senator Maria Cantwell for taking a stand on behalf of Amanda, and by asking the congressional delegates in your state as well as the US State Department and President Obama to support Amanda and her family in appealing this verdict. The best way to contact these officials is by email. We suggest a short note with subject header of "Thank you for supporting Amanda Knox" for Senator Cantwell, and "Please support Amanda Knox" for other officials and for the State Department. For the email form on the White House website, we suggest you choose "I have a policy comment" and mention your support for Amanda Knox in the first sentence of your message.

You can also help by writing the Italian Ambassador to the US at the following address:

Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata
Ambassador of Italy to the United States of America
EMBASSY OF ITALY IN THE UNITED STATES
3000 Whitehaven Street, NW - Washington, DC 20008

Click here for a list of US Senators with contact information for each of them.

Click here to email Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) or use the following:

The Honorable Maria Cantwell
511 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

202-224-3441
202-228-0514 - FAX
202-224-8273 - TDD

Click here to email Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) or use the following:

The Honorable Patty Murray
173 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Phone: (202) 224-2621
Fax: (202) 224-0238
Toll Free: (866) 481-9186

Click here to email the President or use the following:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Comments: 202-456-1111
FAX: 202-456-2461
TTY/TDD comments: 202-456-6213

Click here to email the US State Department or use the following:

U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
 
202-647-4000
TTY:1-800-877-8339

Many have asked how they can write directly to Amanda. Here is her address:

Amanda Knox
casa circondariale "Capanne" di Perugia
Strada pievaiola
06100 Perugia-Italia

Amanda appreciates the letters of support she is getting, but she gets so much mail she may not be able to respond.

"A railroad job from hell"


That is how Paul Ciolino, a top-rated private investigator, described the case against Amanda Knox on the CBS program 48 Hours.  CBS engaged Ciolino to investigate the charges against Amanda, a college student from Seattle who is accused of killing her housemate in Perugia, Italy.  He traveled to Perugia, performed a thorough investigation, and determined that Amanda is clearly innocent.  But she has been in prison for over two years and has now been convicted of a murder she did not commit, all because the authorities will not admit they made a mistake.

The case in a nutshell


Meredith Kercher, a British student living in Perugia, Italy, was brutally murdered on the night of November 1, 2007. The crime involved a sexual assault and a struggle that left behind DNA, bloody shoe prints, and bloody fingerprints, all belonging to one man — Rudy Guede.  Guede fled the country after the murder.  He was tracked down, arrested, and brought back to Italy.  In 2008, he was convicted of murder after choosing an abbreviated trial, and he has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.  

Guede, and Guede alone, is responsible for Meredith's tragic death.

But it took many days to analyze forensic evidence and identify Guede from police fingerprint records.  The authorities were under intense pressure to solve the crime immediately and put the citizens of Perugia at ease.  So they jumped the gun.  Before they knew about Guede, they arrested three innocent people:

  • Amanda, who was Meredith's housemate
  • Raffaele Sollecito, who was Amanda's boyfriend
  • Patrick Lumumba, who ran a bar where Amanda worked part-time  
On the day of these arrests, the authorities publicly announced an extraordinary conclusion — that this trio had murdered Meredith because she refused to join them in a group sex game.  

Lumumba was released after about two weeks because he had an airtight alibi.  But the authorities did not reconsider their basic theory when they realized Lumumba could not have been involved.  Instead, they merely substituted Guede for Lumumba as the third participant.

The problem with this theory is twofold.  

  • First, it is pure speculation.  Amanda and Raffaele have never shown the slightest tendency toward violence or sexual aggression, nor have they ever been involved in group sex, nor is there evidence of a relationship between them and Guede.
  • Second, there is no real evidence that more than one person assaulted Meredith Kercher, or that Amanda and Raffaele were present when it happened.
Everyone agrees this murder involved a violent struggle.  That is why Guede left so much physical evidence in his wake.  But Amanda and Raffaele left none of the physical evidence one would expect if they had been involved in the crime.  The few traces the police have come up with are so weak and ambiguous they prove nothing of importance and should have no place in a fair trial.

Click here to read more about the case and the evidence.

Wrongful prosecution happens all over the world, often when police and prosecutors take a public stance that later proves unsupportable.  That is what has happened in this case.  The authorities got out ahead of the evidence, they announced that they had solved the crime, and now they refuse to admit they were fundamentally wrong in their initial assessment.  The plain truth is that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito had no reason to wish Meredith harm, and neither was present when she was murdered.  They are innocent.

Who we are


Friends of Amanda is a group of people who recognize that Amanda is innocent.  We are not affiliated with her family, and no one is paying us.  We simply want to see justice.