Knox had come to Perugia for its universities and because it had fewer tourists than Florence, a more popular destination for foreign students. Her stepfather had strong reservations about her going to Italy that year, as he felt she was still too naïve. Relatives described the 20-year-old Knox as outgoing but unwary. She worked at part-time jobs to fund an academic year in Italy. In 2007, she made the dean's list at the university. Knox graduated from the Seattle Preparatory School in 2005 and then studied linguistics at the University of Washington. Upon reading Under the Tuscan Sun, which was given to her by her mother, Amanda's interest in the country increased. During that first trip to Italy, she visited Rome, Pisa, the Amalfi Coast, and the ruins of Pompeii. Knox first travelled to Italy on a family holiday at the age of 15. Her parents divorced when she was 10 years old, after which her mother remarried to Chris Mellas, an information technology consultant. Knox and her sisters were raised in West Seattle.
In the initial trial, Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively. Initially, Knox, Sollecito, and Lumumba were all arrested for Kercher's murder, but Lumumba was soon released. During the police interrogations that followed, the conduct of which is a matter of dispute, Knox allegedly implicated herself and her employer, Patrick Lumumba, in the murder. Knox, aged 20 at the time of the murder, called the police after returning to her and Kercher's apartment following a night spent with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and finding Kercher's bedroom door locked and blood in the bathroom.
In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation. She spent almost four years in an Italian prison following her wrongful conviction of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student with whom she shared an apartment in Perugia. Amanda Marie Knox (born July 9, 1987) is an American author, activist, and journalist.