Knox notes: I am not monster of Perugia

AMANDA Knox insisted she was “not the monster of Perugia” in notes she wrote down in prison ahead of her successful appeal against her conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

In handwritten notes released to Italian media, the 24-year-old wrote: “I am not the monster of Perugia.

“The development of the appeal highlights the fact that the evidence against me is either unreliable or circumstantial.”

She also disclosed how she refused to look at graphic photographs of Meredith Kercher’s bloodied body during the court case.

Pictures of the 21-year- old’s mutilated body were shown to the court by the Kercher family’s lawyer, who insisted it was “necessary to show her suffering”.

On the day they were shown, Knox wrote: “I could not bring myself to look at the photographs of Meredith’s body because I could not stand to see the way she had been reduced.

“I never saw Mez dead other than in those photographs which my lawyers showed me and which shocked me. I can’t look at them calmly because Mez was my friend.”

She added: “I am not the Monster of Florence.”

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini had attacked Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 27, for not looking at the pictures, suggesting it was an indication of their guilt.

Knox also wrote of how she saw she was being betrayed by the Italian police and prosecutors.

“Justice already failed me. Need for justice for Mez parallel, not contrasting, with need for justice for me and Raf.

“No history of violence/ mental disturbance. Didn’t run away (the wicked flee).

“Naive, unable to understand the aggressive insistence of the investigators, unable to defend myself,” she had written.

A sobbing Knox said she was “overwhelmed” to be back home in the United States after spending four years in the Italian jail.

Speaking in an emotion- fuelled press conference following her release, she paid tribute to the people who supported and believed in her during her ordeal.

But the American’s acquittal has left Meredith Kercher’s family still seeking answers to what happened on the night of her murder, with her parents revealing the court ruling had taken them “back to square one”.

Prosecutors saw their case collapse over discredited DNA evidence, but are now to appeal against the verdicts to Italy’s highest criminal court — something the Kerchers fully support.

Knox arrived in her hometown of Seattle after her conviction for killing the Leeds University student at their shared home in Perugia was overturned by a jury on Monday night.

Speaking to journalists and supporters minutes after touching down at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, she said: “What’s important for me to say is just thank you to everyone who has believed in me, who has defended me, who has supported my family.

“I just want... My family is the most important thing to me right now and I just want to go and be with them. So thank you for being there for me.”

Knox, who spoke publicly for the first time since her release from Perugia’s Capanne prison, added: “I am really overwhelmed right now, I was looking down from the aeroplane and it seemed like everything wasn’t real.”

Meanwhile, the Italian appeals court judge who was part of the jury which acquitted Knox, said in a TV interview that the American and her ex-boyfriend might know the “real truth” about who killed her British roommate, and could even be responsible.

In his first public comments since Knox and Sollecito were acquitted, Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann stressed on state TV that the acquittals “resulted from the truth that was created in the trial”.

“But the real truth could be different,” Judge Pratillo Hellmann added.

“They could also be responsible but the proof isn’t there,” he said.

Asked who knew the truth about the killing, the judge referred to a third defendant, Rudy Guede, who was convicted of Meredith Kercher’s murder in a separate trial and is serving a 16-year sentence in Italy.

“Certainly Rudy Guede” knows. “I won’t say he’s the only one to know,” the judge added.

Journalists were also addressed by Knox’s lawyer Theodore Simon

Simon, who was interrupted by cheers from Knox’s supporters, said: “It has been a trying and gruelling four-year nightmarish marathon that no child or parent should have to endure.”

He said the Italian jury’s decision to release her following an 11-month appeal was “bold and courageous”.

Simon said added that Knox and her family had “persevered in unusual grace and under extremely difficult circumstances,” telling the conference there were “profoundly absent” facts in the case against his client.

“But Amanda and her parents and family have demonstrated unquestioned and unparalleled patience, steadfast courage, dignity, resilience and fortitude, but most of all ... relied upon their faith this unjust conviction would not stand.”

The Philadelphia-based lawyer said: “Let us not forget that Meredith was Amanda’s friend and I know that Amanda and the family want us to remember Meredith and to keep the Kercher family in our prayers.”