Amanda Knox

Welcome to the shit show. Things are going to get weird. It's your fave villain, Kale Lowry. And you're listening to Barely Famous. Today on the podcast, we have Amanda Knox, and I'm so excited to talk to you about your new book. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So I read the entire book, and I have to say that I vaguely knew who you were. Okay. But this is my first real impression of you. Okay.

And that's another weird thing that you can either be really upset about or really grateful for because I never have to pretend that someone doesn't know the shitty thing that I've gone through. They know it and I don't have to have the burden of wondering if I should hide it or tell it or not. So it's just kind of there.

It's just there for everyone to see and to scrutinize if that's what they feel like they want to do. But it's an opportunity for me to build a bridge with another human being and they can decide to walk that bridge or not. And if they do, great. If they don't, okay. Like this is life. And so I feel like, yes, there is anger. There is grief.

but there is gratitude because there is always always always opportunity within the pain right you know yeah i wrote chills in the margin here where um you talk about meeting um antoine day and josh kieser and they told me they told you their stories josh just texted me yesterday by the way yeah because we obviously remain good friends and i owe antoine a a call thank you for bringing him up

Because we're in the exoneree band together. And so I have to talk to him about what's going on at the Intersense Network conference this year.

But anyway, no, but that's incredible. When you speak of gratitude, I mean, getting to know other people that have that share some of the same experience as you has to be. Somewhat cathartic, right? Oh, totally.

Absolutely cathartic. And also so grateful that I get to encounter people and have something in common with people that I never would have met or had any reason to have a relationship with.

What an amazing thing. In part of the book, you talked about how certain scandals and things like that are... painted in a way that you brought your own self up and it's, you know, the Amanda Knox scandal or Amanda Foxy Noxy, or you brought up Monica Lewinsky. Yes. And I thought that was so interesting. And I never really had that perspective that we're erasing what Bill Clinton did.

Yes. Or what Ken Starr did or whatever, you know, like.

And I there's, I was so angry and hurt by that because truly the, It was, you know, all of this was about Meredith's death. Right. And Rudy.

Yeah.

And he gets off the hook and nobody really remembers him. I had to Google him because I was like, I don't even actually know who committed the murder. Right.

A lot of people don't know who committed the murder. A lot of people don't know that he is being investigated. Right. Actually, the investigation is over. He has been indicted with sexual assault of another young woman. So he's going on trial for having sexually assaulted another young woman now that he's been out. So like, nobody knows that. Because nobody cares about him.

Because he's not the name and face associated with his own crimes.

Because drama sells or what? Like, what do you think it is?

I mean, I think people like simplifying things. So you know, they want one name and one face associated with one story and the the media. And I think the

the prosecution in the case realized that the most compelling narrative was focused on me for you know the the reasons the reasons um and as a result of that like it's it's simplifying it for the audience like they if you throw too many words and adjectives and things to remember about a story it's not going to remind people of what like of what the product is right like It's target.

Like, oh, look, they're eating a McDonald's hamburger for the first time after 20 years in prison. The end. And what really is the case is that a whole human drama unfolds behind that curtain where that is for the first time the person living their life and like discovering who they are and answering that now what question after having been forced to survive in an insanely unfair and brutal

It is Macy's. It is Amanda Knox. Like it is a product. So if you think about it as a product that someone is selling you, then it makes sense that it has its own little trademark, its own little logo. Like that is what is being sold to people. And, but the problem is this is a real life tragedy that has many victims and the way that it has been packaged as a product.

is a misrepresentation of that reality.

No, 100%. And I was, I mean, just reading it, I was like, these are not characters in a movie. These are not characters in a book. These are real human beings that are affected for the rest of their lives. And I mean, I don't even know. I don't know how someone is able to

get through some of the things that you've been through um I really don't do no right because what else I wrote on the side here bring this up um you wrote I desperately wanted to merely be judged for who I actually was for what I'd actually done but I wasn't even sure how much blame rested on the rest of the world and how much rested on me I none rested on you in my opinion

Yeah, I've slowly come to that realization. So this part of the book that you're talking about is me grappling, especially when I first came home, with the amount of blame that was being put on me for my own wrongful conviction. So there was this sense that even if I wasn't

guilty of the crime I was guilty of being thought of as guilty so people were sort of attributing to me blame for the bad thing that had happened to me and again like this is something that you see all the time in wrongful conviction cases where there's this sense of okay fine you didn't do it but like you were acting like a total spaz like what else were we supposed to think or you

This eyewitness thought it was you, so what else were we supposed to think? And there's this shocking amount of unwillingness for the people who are charged to hold people accountable for crimes to not hold themselves accountable. And there's a scapegoating of the wrongly convicted person as if they are responsible for everything that happened, when really we are the least responsible

responsible and we had the least amount of power for what happened sort of like that model that did the pictures right exactly exactly so how do we change that like you know because i i consume media i scroll on tiktok i read headlines but i also you know i have the podcast and i want to set the record straight how how do i as a consumer of all of this and and

in just the general public, how do we change that?

That's a great question. So there are a couple of things that people can do. One is become a little more literate about how media is made. How is this product that is being sold to you made? And what are the incentive structures behind that product that is being sold to you? Is it an oversimplification of reality? Is it a story that is meant to trigger your primal impulses? And is that

is that true or is that not true if you are like one choice people have to ask themselves is do i want to be consuming this product just because it's being shoved down my throat doesn't mean that i actually have to consume it do i want to be consuming this product and if i do want to be consuming this product which is totally fine because like i'm not gonna like judge somebody for being interested in true crime these are real human life stories that have a

that are important not just to the people who are directly impacted, but they have this resonating effect on society. It makes sense that we care about crimes, even if they happen across the world, because it is a human dilemma of how we are hurt and how the institutions are supposed to support us. So it makes sense to want to care about that. But if that is true, then know why

you are consuming that product. And then make sure that you are consuming the right product. If you want to get healthy, you don't just listen to McDonald's when they say that their hamburgers are healthy for you. You go and you learn what's healthy for you. And so get the things that you need from the products that are being offered to you.

and traumatic experience. And so what I like to say is that, you know, I've written a book before this, I've written a memoir before this called waiting to be heard. I'm very proud of it. I wrote it at a time of my life where I felt like I needed to react to this huge, incredible narrative that had been made about me without any sort of input from me.

And don't just sort of take the easy way out and just be like, oh, this is the thing that's happening to me. That's what it is. I think that would be a big factor.

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when I was growing up on reality TV, it was always, I would get really upset about some of the edits and they would say, we have to make this digestible for the audience. We have to make sure that when this is edited, it makes sense to the viewer, even if it's skewing the story and how it actually happened, it has to make sense to the viewer.

And I would imagine that that's sort of the same way that, um, yeah, makes sense to the viewer, um,

is a very patronizing way of saying like, I need to make this black and white because otherwise the audience is going to be too dumb to appreciate the nuance.

Right. And fitting, you know, a circle into a square or what, The prosecutor did to you in fitting the evidence into his theory. Exactly. So and that's really sad because I did read and I don't know how much you want to talk about it. We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.

But, you know, you reaching out to your prosecutor and holding him accountable, but also giving him a chance to explain himself. Totally. Totally.

Yeah, I think the thing I wanted to... Again, I really hope people will read this because it is a complex... Layered. It's a complex development in my story of reaching out to my prosecutor, developing a relationship with him, and having this dialogue that was not just about the case. Right. But also was about the case and how it has...

And it was in reaction to that, that I was explaining here, this is this terrible experience that happened to me. And this is, this is, what it looks like from my perspective to be on trial for this crime. This book is not that. This book is what I've done in response to that.

how it has developed and evolved over time like that is a really interesting story and it's a fascinating uh even just like i mean it should be in like a psychology case study the whole time i was like what is going on and you really didn't have a whole lot of support in in going to talk to him and developing this relationship i know that you mentioned that your husband was

overall supportive, but you know, your parents. Oh yeah. Everyone else thought I was crazy. I was a little bit like, I don't know that I would do this just because I would, I would be so angry.

So here's the thing though. Like someone told me, um, asked me the other day, what do you do when the whole world's against you? Yeah. What do you do? What do you do? And I said, well, over the years I've discovered that, um,

The only thing that can sort of stop someone in their tracks, and by in their tracks, I mean in the tracks of their just like already developed thoughts about you, is to surprise them. But how do you do that? You do what no one would expect you to do. Reach out to your prosecutor. Everyone expected me to hate him and run away from him for the rest of my life. I hated him for you.

And, you know, it's tempting to hate and run away from people when you've been victimized. And I felt like... That wasn't enough for me because I had unanswered questions. But also I was a part of me that sort of a rebellious part of me was like, what can I do that everyone doesn't expect me to do?

Right. But when he still wouldn't apologize, how do you get to the place where you can... Be okay with that.

I actually have a good analogy for this. So in life, you cannot control. Right. You cannot control what's happening in your life. So I explain it like there's a difference between going shopping and going thrift shopping. Okay. When you go shopping, you have a list of things that you need. You go to the store. You find them where you expect to find them. You get them and you take them home.

I think a lot of people think that life is like shopping. But life is actually thrift shopping. Thrift shopping, you go, and if you have a list of things that you need to get from the thrift store, you are inevitably going to be disappointed because they may or may not have the things that you need in your size.

So like if you go into a thrift store and you're looking for that specific little black dress that you saw in the catalog that's gonna fit you perfectly, you are going to walk away from your life disappointed.

But instead, if you go to the thrift store with an open mind and are ready to receive whatever it is the thrift gods have in store for you, a mushroom lamp, for instance, then you are going to find yourself pleasantly surprised and you're going to find your life an enjoyable experience because you are open to discovering things that you needed. Yeah. that you didn't know you needed.

And so for me, as a very curious person, I'm very, very curious. Instead of having expectations of people, I try to give people the opportunity to pleasantly surprise me. and to allow myself to know that there are certain needs that I have, but that those needs can be met in unspecified ways. So what do I need when I ask my prosecutor to apologize and to say he was wrong? What do I need there?

If Waiting to be Heard is reactive, this is a book about how I've lived my life proactively and how I've been really human because it is not like... Look at me and how good I am. It is like, oh my God, look at all these mistakes I made because I am still processing this traumatic experience in my lived life and how it's had repercussions that have been

Well, I need him to recognize that I am a human being that was misunderstood and hurt as a result of that misunderstanding. And even though he is, to this day, incapable of saying I was wrong and I'm sorry, he is capable of saying many other things that touch upon that need that I have, that deep down need. And I don't want to give him away. So read the book. Definitely read the book.

But do you know what I mean? I do, but I also... Are you are you OK with where it stands today with your prosecutor, where your relationship or do you still have a relationship with him today? Yeah. Yeah. Are you happy Valentine's Day? He did. Yeah. See, I don't know. I don't know how it's so complicated. It is complicated. It's not just a like it's not black and white. Yeah.

No, it's so not black and white. So. are you okay with where your relationship stands with him today? Do you feel like you got what you needed?

Do you know that bluey episode where bingo, that bluey episode where bingo is pressing the yes, no button at the same time? Yes, no. And there's a great Zen saying, I practice Zen, there's a great Zen saying where, you know, a Zen monk went to his master and said, you know, master, you know, basically like, how am I doing? And his master said, you're perfect just the way you are.

And you could use improvement. And that's exactly what it is. I mean, that's exactly what reality is. It is this paradox of if you really, really sit with things as they are. You realize that they are OK, no matter what's going on, if you really just like sit with it.

It's okay. And also, it can use some improvement.

That's how I feel about your prosecutor. I don't want to mispronounce his name, so I won't. Oh, yes.

Yeah. Giuliano Mignini. Giuliano Mignini.

Okay. I feel like I was pretty close. I silently read it, but I was close in my head. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I also mispronounced Hermione's name for years. I thought it was Hermione. Okay. Until, like, book four when J.K. Rowling specifically spelled it out.

Is she French? Like, is that a French name, Hermione? No. I think it's a Greek derivative. Oh, that makes sense. It's from Hermes. Okay. I don't know. I also wrote implicit bias here. I'm... Before I was wrongly accused, I never gave the criminal justice system a second thought because I belong to a class of people who didn't have to. Yes.

And I feel like that's one of the things in this book that so many people can resonate with, even not sharing your same experience. Absolutely.

And that's a thing that I hope people come away from it as well. Because when I look at my role, like, okay, so... Life gives you whatever it is that it gives you, and you get to decide what you're going to do with it. And one of the things that life gave me was the opportunity, like you said, to connect with other people who had gone through this experience but whose stories –

Never made it to me because I was living in my little suburb in Seattle reading Harry Potter and not like and it wasn't in the news and nobody was talking about it. And one of the I will never forget one of the first things that someone told me, which was like.

Thank God you got wrongly convicted, Amanda, because if it wasn't for you, this little white girl from the suburbs in Seattle, college educated, who got wrongly convicted, no one would believe that it was real. And that, to this day, gives me chills because it's an unfortunate thing.

reality but it's true and I think that many people didn't really empathize or even know about the wrongly convicted person's experience until they heard about it through me and so like when I look at that is like it can be just a sad thing that's true or it can be an opportunity it can be an opportunity for me to build a bridge between that world and the world that didn't know about it right

unexpected and such a huge part of who I am and how I have tried to grapple with the existential problem that we all face, which is who are we? What is our role in the world? How do we try to make the world a better place and leave it better than how we found it?

I think that yours was... Like I said, I vaguely knew who you were before. I didn't do a deep dive or anything prior to reading your book and everything. But I had heard... That you were wrongly convicted. And then after that, heard about, you know, like, Kalief Browder. I don't know if you know who he is. That was a tragic story. And Greg Kelly. I don't know if you've ever heard of his story.

I don't know about Greg Kelly. What's his story? His story is that he was wrongly convicted for child molestation.

Which is, like, one of the worst things you could ever be accused of.

I mean, and he was a college. He was going to go to college and then potentially be drafted to the NFL. And so, huge story. It ended up the I guess the not the suspect. What is the word I'm looking for? The person who actually did it was right in front of their face. And you're just like and they go on to be criminals in other ways. And you're like, where? Open your eyes. What is going on here?

That is the story. That's like. And that's one of those tragic consequences that I think people don't really appreciate about wrongful convictions is like. In the vast majority of wrongful conviction cases, an actual crime occurred and they got the wrong person, which means that the person who did do the crime is somewhere out there.

And possibly committing more crimes.

And very likely committing more crimes. Exactly.

And that's heartbreaking. When I Googled Rudy and I saw that he was... I mean, this wasn't his first crime.

No, he was not an unknown entity. He had a history of breaking and entering. He hadn't murdered anyone yet. But as we know, the progression, the escalation, it just continues. Yeah.

So now you work with the Innocence Project. What other advocacy work do you do?

So the Innocence Project is based in New York. There are lots of Innocence Projects. I think this is a really good distinction. I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding that there's one Innocence Project. There are actually many Innocence Projects. I am on the board of something called the Innocence Center, which is an entirely separate innocence entity. But they're all like...

Right. And in the book, you actually there's a quote where you talk about how telling your story is your it's trauma, but also it's healing. Yes. And I definitely feel like you I got the message in the book. Do you know what I mean? And I think you did a great job. I there are certain parts in this book where I literally wrote in the margin crying, sobbing, chills. And I just.

Innocence organizations, they all do the same thing and they're based in different places.

Okay, so the Innocence Project here in New York primarily works in New York Although because there's such a big and you know well-established organization They often give assistance elsewhere like that You know a recent case that the Innocence Project here in New York was working on was in Hawaii this like horrible murder of this young woman named Dana Ireland and

that for 25 years they had the wrong people, and then they finally found the person who did it using genetic genealogy. Anyway, it's a long, crazy story. I'm hosting a podcast about it that's going to be coming out later. called Three. So look out for that.

Can you just mention what your podcast is? I know it's Labyrinth. Yes.

So my podcast is called Labyrinth. It is produced and host with me and my husband, Christopher Robinson. And we talk to people. It's not just criminal justice related. It's the idea being, again, that we all have an interconnected reality, which is we all at certain points in our life feel lost and we have to find our way again. So I talk to people about those kinds of experiences.

But I also occasionally guest host other podcasts. And one of those that I'm doing is called Three. It is with Audio Chuck and the Crime Junkie crew. And we are looking into the case of Dana Ireland and the discovery of who actually committed the crime and the subsequent wrongful convictions of Ian Schweitzer and his brother and another man named Frank Pauline.

And I haven't heard of these cases and that's so heartbreaking because I was talking to somebody yesterday about how people on the internet, they don't even have law degrees or investigation, you know, experience, but they can help. And if there are more eyes on a case, you know, it's possible that they could make a break or they could do something helpful.

Absolutely. And I, you know, a great example of this, have you ever seen don't fuck with cats? Yes. Yes. I saw that. So like the man power, like one of the, one of the, a major cause of wrongful conviction is just lack of resources that investigators have to pursue cases. And one of the great ways that people can assist with a case is by donating that manpower.

And that goes for innocence projects, anything. I remember there was an incredible amount of work that people did for my own family while I was being wrongly convicted. Amazing things that they were doing that they didn't have to do, like just cataloging all of the evidence, translating court documents because it was all in Italian.

Some people were donating hours just translating court documents for my family. Other people were database specialists, and so they were taking this influx of crazy information and just organizing it. Even just the process of organizing all of the stuff that goes into a case is incredibly overwhelming. So having someone with a specialization in that can really, really help people.

Or you're a media specialist. You could donate media training to somebody who's coming out of a wrongful conviction and wants to tell their story but doesn't know how.

Like, you know, I'm going to be doing a panel at the Innocence Network conference this year that's specifically about media training and what to keep in mind when you want to tell your story and you want to partner with somebody in the media world to tell your story and what outlet you might want to use.

That's really interesting because I would imagine you were sort of thrown into... Media, you know, coming actually the entire time, not even just coming out of prison. But and so you probably had no idea how to essentially conduct yourself in an interview or how to. Now, I was media traumatized before I was media trained.

And you talk about in this book how you don't have to go through a similar situation as somebody else to be able to empathize and relate to them. And that was something that I really resonated with because there were so many things that you described. I was on Teen Mom, you know, like I wasn't. accused of murder or any serious crime.

There's a lot to be said there because, I mean, it sort of perpetuates the, you know, any theories that are clearly correct.

outrageous but I mean you're like oh well she she looked a certain way or she adjusted herself a certain way or she didn't shed a tear so she's guilty obviously right you know and so like traumatized I mean I would love to talk to an exoneree and help them with media training I don't know that I don't know if I'd be a good fit for it but I would at least try

Absolutely. And you never know because like every exoneree is different. I think that's another thing to remember is we're all different people. We're not the same person. You might like, maybe you try connecting with one person and it's not a good fit and you try connecting with another person and you guys hit it off. Like, you know, there's, we're all human beings.

And I think the thing that people underestimate is like how much was taken from an exoneree. And so how much there is opportunity to, to, Right. And there's like so much potential in within just like there's so much potential within every one of us, like really like giving someone an opportunity to like access parts of themselves that they might not even know about. Right.

Is is an incredible gift.

When you started with the Innocence Project, was the the innocent the. Italy's Innocence Project or Innocence Project of Italy the first time that you developed a relationship with the Innocence Project in any branch?

In fact, while I was going through everything, the Italy Innocence Project didn't exist.

Oh.

It formed after my – everything that I went through. Because of what you went through or just a coincidence? I mean – I wouldn't say it was only because of me. There are lots of wrongful convictions. And I think, you know, Luca Luparia and Martina Cargosi are the two people who are the only... People think Innocence Project, they imagine like 100 people working on it.

A lot of times it's like one or two people who start an organization and they just do a bunch of pro bono work. And so that's the case in Italy. It's Luca Luparia and Martina Cagosi who are working on all of these issues. And it's not just working cases. It's also working legislation, trying to change the laws to make it possible for to overturn wrongful convictions.

So that is all work that they are doing pro bono and by themselves. So anybody who can offer some support in that regard is great. So they didn't exist while I was going through everything. And I didn't know anything about the Innocence Project. As far as I knew, I was the only person who had ever gone through this experience. I literally was that ignorant. And it wasn't until I came home

And I connected with other innocence organizations who reached out to my family to support my family. Then I realized the true scope of not just what I had been through, but like this institutional global human problem.

I didn't realize that there was the Innocence Project in any other country. I just thought it was in California in the United States.

And so I, you know, but I still related to so many things that you said in this book in trying to find myself, which is what you're describing.

Yeah, no, it's so... Our first ever Innocence Project began here in New York, which is where we are, in case anyone's wondering. But then, from there, different organizations started popping up around the country, and then either... there were attorneys here who are working on innocence projects who decided to bring them out of country.

A good example of this is Justin Brooks, who is like solely responsible for there being any innocence projects in all of South America. Um, he like just cause because he has connections and he can, he speaks Spanish and he has all these connections with South America. He just brought that work to South America and helped establish organizations in different countries there.

Okay.

Um, yeah, exactly. Um, And he, again, is on the board of the Innocence Center, the project that I am directly affiliated with. But then other countries just were inspired by the work of the Innocence Project and decided that they wanted to form their own, again, individual people. One person, like one of my favorite people is Bill Oberle of Alaska.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think that was a big takeaway for me because, you know, again, like when I was writing my first memoir, Waiting to be Heard, I felt utterly estranged from the rest of humanity and that I constantly had to explain myself to people.

Again, single guy who decided that instead of retiring from his lawyer job, he was just going to fully commit himself to pro bono innocence work in his retirement. by himself in Alaska.

Just because he's a good person.

Just because he's a good person and he believes in it and he could do it. So now he has, you know, some people working with him, but like, He was by himself. And it's not like, you know, he's not a fundraiser. He's not a politician. He's a lawyer. He just he knows the law. Right. And so he just plugs away.

And a lot of times it's just this like plugging away day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And 80 percent of the time you don't win. 80 percent of the time, even with help from the Innocence Project. Yeah, absolutely. 80% of the time the Innocence Project is taking on cases and there just isn't a way to help this innocent person. Why?

They've exhausted all their appeals. The DNA was not saved, so it couldn't be tested. There are a million things that can go wrong. And in a lot of the especially older cases where they've already gone through all of their appeals process and there just isn't a process to there isn't a hearing that they can have that would reconsider their case. How many appeals are allowed? I mean, it depends.

Or does it vary by state or case? Yeah. Yeah. I would say that like, you know, there are technical like there are things that happen on the state level, things that happen on the federal level. So like there it's it depends case by case where it is, what's going on. But yes. So like there there reaches a certain point where the United States government said you had your chance too bad.

And that's why actually Mark Godsey, who is a former prosecutor, now head of the Ohio Innocence Project, is attempting to change laws internationally to make innocence a human right. Because right now, if you are innocent of a crime, you are not guaranteed freedom. If you can prove you're innocent, it doesn't mean that you are guaranteed to be freed or found innocent.

all that you are guaranteed is a fair trial. And if you have exhausted the process of a fair trial, tough nuts. So what we are trying to do, or what he is trying to do, and just sort of by we, I mean the innocence movement, we are trying to establish a human right to, if you can prove your innocence, then it doesn't matter where you are in the legal process.

And in this book, this is where I've realized that, oh, my God, this insane, very not unique, but very uncommon experience that I went through has resonance with everybody's human experience. And I slowly came to realize that and realize that, no, I was not estranged and ostracized from the rest of you, honey. I belonged.

You deserve to have a chance to be freed.

That's incredible. And I just, how can people, just everyday people contribute to helping something like this, like a movement like this?

I mean, again, one big way is to look up your local innocence project. So that's really key is it's like find what's happening locally. The best thing that you can do is look at what's happening on the ground where you are. And then so find those people who are doing that work locally. Sometimes it's in your state.

Sometimes it's in like an area like the Midwest Innocence Project is a project because they cover like three different states. Or for instance, the Idaho Innocence Project used to exist, but they ran out of funding. So now a lot of the cases that the Idaho Innocence Project was working on have now been brought on to the Innocence Center, which is what I work with.

And so they're working on Idaho cases, even though they're based in California.

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and so like there's a lot like it's a little shifty you have to do a little bit of research but like find out what's going on locally and then ask like this is this is who I am this is what my area of expertise is what I can offer even if it's like I can offer a monthly donation Great.

If I can offer to help read case files like I have some experience in that I can I can offer to like help you correspond with the with the person in prison just so that you can like I can help them keep up to date with what's going on. Like there are a million different little tiny tasks that could be that manpower would lend to. So. anything like that.

I'll be curious to see if Delaware has anything.

If you work in airlines, by the way, or you work at any kind of transportation, like someone donated their miles to my family so they could more cheaply travel to Italy.

And in fact, my experience had an important role for helping other people thrive. to understand their experience as well, because ultimately the questions that we are all facing are the same.

I wanted to ask you about that, if you don't mind, your family. When I was reading the book, and you did touch a Just to clarify, your family moved to Italy or your mom was a school teacher. So she couldn't move there. But but somebody hosted your your stepdad.

Is that right? Yes. So someone in my family after I was arrested was always in Italy for the entire duration of my imprisonment in Italy. So we rent for the first three years we rented or we, they, my family rented a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Perugia and someone was alone there sitting around waiting to come see me for one hour a week. Did they work while they were there?

Well, it depends. So like, um, it depended on what their job was. My stepdad who spent the majority, he was the one who spent the most time in Italy and He works in tech, so he could do his work remotely. My mom, who is a schoolteacher, could only go when she was on break. But, you know, she's a schoolteacher, so she has the summer off, so she could come see me in the summer.

She could see me on spring break. She could see me during winter break. That's when I would see my mom. So it really depends on when people could get time off of work.

But I would imagine that became incredibly expensive because you still have a mortgage or rent to pay in the United States. And then you have, you know, the I know how much it costs to fly overseas. And then you have multiple people and then you have siblings. Right. And and then lawyer fees on top of all that.

And then you use the proceeds from your first memoir to pay your family and your your legal team, which I thought was incredible for you to do. I thought I was incredibly lucky to be able to do.

i will cry um so when i was telling the girls this morning i was like why am i so emotional about your story because it's fucking emotional that's why i was telling the girls like you know how i felt like your hands were tied but you did everything you could i mean that's all we can do you know but you didn't deserve any of this and so

When you've done work with the Innocence Project, whether it be Italy or anywhere else, have you talked to other exonerees about that experience and the realization that you relate to more people than you even know or more people can relate to you than you know?

And neither do any of us.

Right. Right. But I just I thought it was incredible. But then I had so many questions because I'm like, how how is that possible that your family could, you know, be there every single week? And I read that in the book and it was like, well. I mean, people could go into bankruptcy doing that. You know what I mean? Just trying to be there to support you.

And I also, which was so weird to me is that I had never heard of your family supporting you during this entire time. None of that was part of the media headlines. None of that was, you know, in the research. It was, there was a lot of things that, you know, I told you after I read, I Googled and, um,

Couldn't find anything about the family support and how in this book you talk about you, you grew up with a very happy childhood. And none of that was mentioned and it wasn't talked about that you, you know, had a sibling and you know you guys were really close and a tight knit family and you're with your own mind like all of this and so I just If it can happen to you, it could happen.

And, you know, so many of us don't even think twice. So you said that, but so many of us don't think twice about the fact that it could happen. And your stepdad, I thought, was really incredible. And I was thinking about how incredible that relationship must be for you with your stepdad to have been willing to do that.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, he stepped up. He was he went into dad mode.

Yeah. Oh, my God. It made me emotional because I'm like, you know, your family really banded together for you.

Yeah. And like especially considering that they're like I had sort of grown up with like my mom's over here and my dad's right here and they're very close.

OK.

But they don't really mix because like their breakup was not. Sure. It was not consensual. And so like there was this like understanding that like here's my mom's world. Here's my dad's world. Also, culturally, they were very different. My mom was born in Germany. And so I had a very German upbringing, you know, growing up eating rouladen and Zwetschgenknödel and all of that.

Like that was mom's house. And then dad's house was like hamburger helper and hot dogs. You know, like Mr. All-American. And so that was like a really interesting way to grow up because it sort of infused in me this like deep, deep knowledge that the world has many cultures and many ways of being. And they're all cool. They're just different.

Yeah, I mean, I think that is a really defining factor of a lot of exonerees is we have felt like the world put us at a distance and we were called monsters. Mm-hmm. And we're trying to reclaim our place in humanity again. And that involves an exchange of mutual trust. Because it's not just that we want the world to trust us. We want to trust the world again.

But they like without question immediately banded together. Your biological parents. My biological parents to save me. Like, this is how you do parenthood. Like, my parents are so dope because, like, whatever their, like, individual, personal bullshit, like, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter.

I'm honestly honored that you are willing to be emotional with me because, like, it's emotional for me, you know? Like... And it, I mean, it taught me so much about how to be a parent today. Like it just doesn't matter what all of my shit is. It is, I am there. I am for her. I am for my son. I am for my daughter. Like no question.

So sort of to switch gears a little bit with you saying that your, your mom and dad kind of banded, they did band together, not kind of, they banded together for you to save you. Has that sort of shifted the dynamic now that you, it has. So like, does everyone get along? I mean, in the way that a family gets along.

Yeah. But, like, yes, in the way, in the sense that, like, now we can hang out with each other and in ways that we didn't before. Just because, like, we've trauma bonded, you know, in a new way. And that's great. Like, there's an openness now that wasn't quite there before. There was this feeling before of, like... I had two separate families and it doesn't feel that way anymore.

It's a united family that is just big and complicated and full of history.

Layered. But you would want that for your own kids, right? You have two kids of your own and you want them to feel that.

I really, really appreciate you bringing up my family. We can talk about them more if you want. Well, in the sense that, like, I think that people... Another sort of misconception I think that people have about wrongful convictions is that, like, they only ever happen to the person that is the person going to prison. Like, that is the one person who is being impacted by this wrongful conviction.

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Well, you said in the book, I mean, you have...

three sisters I have three younger sisters yeah and you missed four years of their lives and not just them like my cousin like my aunt like you know but like yes if we're talking about like that like core yes I missed like my youngest sister was nine years old when I went to prison And she was 13 when I got out. So much happens in that period of time.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't feel like four years is a lot. But when I was reading your book, I was like, no, four years is... I mean, especially with siblings. I mean, four years can make a world of a difference.

Absolutely. Or like, I remember my cousin coming to visit me once. So... my family also is very tight knit. So I grew up like very close to my cousins and because I'm the oldest of all of them, like I was constantly babysitting them, taking them out places. Like, you know, I was taking my cousin to the zoo constantly and I loved it because I'm obsessed with the zoo.

I vaguely heard about your case, and I was kind of glad after reading the book that I didn't prejudge you. Okay. Yay. And I just wanted to know. So I had so many questions and initially started forming forming questions on like a document. And I was like, oh, I can't wait to ask her this. And then everything was pretty much answered in the book. So I thought that was really nice.

Um, even though it's like some of them are unethical, but actually the one, the one in Seattle is ethical. So we're great.

Don't go to the one in Madrid, Spain. I recently went. Don't go.

Don't go. All right. Noted. And I remember just like I hadn't seen him in years and I hadn't really given you know, you get pictures like I was allowed to have picture like 10 pictures with me of my family in my cell. And I just sort of coveted them. And and but they're like these static images of people. And then he came the one like the one time that he was allowed to come.

He showed up and he was suddenly he went from being here to here. From like here to here and from high to high.

And I was just like, oh, my God. And you just didn't even expect for that to be. No, I was not expecting it. No, I was just shocked because I think about my own kids and the I mean, looking back at videos of my own kids from nine to 13 is. I mean, it's like I don't they're two different people.

And so finding that place and those moments of connection and realizing that our experience is not just our own is a way that we can not just feel better about the world and learn to trust each other again, but also try to get people to understand what are the causes of wrongful convictions in the first place? What is this impulse to judge other people that we have deep inside of us?

And so when you're I mean, seeing people that you're close to and you haven't seen them for four years or three years even. And now it's a different person. You you you realize how much you.

possibly missed out on right and also how much are they missing out on you because i was just crying because also like i think the thing that sort of shocked me um especially when i came out was not really knowing how much i had changed

And and coming out and realizing that I was not the person who went in and and realizing that my own family who had been attempting to hold my hand throughout this entire experience. really like physically couldn't do that with me. They had not lived the same experiences as me.

And so it was like, we were walking on paths together, but they were different paths and we were encountering different things along the way. And then we met up on the other side as if we had been walking this path together, but like I had seen very different things that they had seen. And now we had to rediscover who each other was.

And I'm sure that presented its own set of challenges because like, It was probably a shock to them just as much as it was to you to realize that.

Oh, and let's, like, if we're going to get really real right now, let's also talk about how understandably there was this sensation that even though everyone knew that it was not my fault, the trauma that they all experienced was associated with me.

And so there was a kind of sense of all of our lives got put on hold and all of us went through this horrific thing because of you, me. And then you feel what do I do? How do I make up for that? How do I like how do I I didn't even know all the things that they were going through because I was stuck in a box.

And then I come back and I'm like, oh, now my nine year old sister has panic attacks all the time. Oh, now my my other sister, you know, she had to drop out of college. And and like. What do I do about that? there are certain things that I can't do anything about and that's hard.

I have to give like so much credit to my sisters, especially my, um, my younger sister, Deanna, um, because she was carrying so much pain as like this, this sort of de facto older sister after I was put in prison, she felt a lot of the burden of like being the older sister and that left some deep, deep scars. Um, And that took the form of resentment towards me.

And it got to the point where we were really struggling. But like she came around and like reconnected with me in a way that I have never, you know, talk about like someone coming around and like,

owning their own shit but also like not like acknowledging like just seeing the world clearly and being willing to like have the grace and the gratitude and the forgiveness like she came to me and like I have never experienced like the kind of grace that my sister had towards me and the willingness to like acknowledge my experience that she could not have lived herself like my sister is incredible I'm so proud of her

But that's the story that so many people don't have. That's the side of all of this that people, they need to read about it. Would you say that you guys are closer now then? Oh, yes. Yeah. How could you not?

And how do we confront that in a way that we are being responsible to each other?

How could you not? I mean, either it destroys your relationship or it makes you stronger. And so like your hope is like, what can I do from this painful experience that's not just going to break me or break us? How do we together find the opportunity in the pain?

Do you think that when your mom was instilling in you to be kind, do you think that your sister also had that in her because of your mom and that's how you guys were able to sort of empathize with each other and come full circle for each other?

That's a great question that I should talk to my sister about.

I don't want to speak for her, but we were raised by the same mom, so you'd think. Because it seemed to be pretty impactful for you.

It was a very defining moment for me in my youth when my mom just sort of offhand, like, oh, you know, you could be smart, you could be beautiful, but what I really want is for you to be kind. And it just stuck with me.

making peanut butter sandwiches, you know, like I was this tall, you know, like something that just sticks with you forever.

And then you're trying to wonder what I'm going to say to my kid. That's going to stick with them forever. And it's like, I hope it's not going to send them to therapy.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Have any outlets ever reached out to you and apologized to you for your portrayal?

No, literally when you, when I read that in your book, I'm like, I don't know how many things I've said to my kids. And I'm like, please don't let it be the wrong thing that sticks with them, please.

And that, and that's the thing you don't have control over, you know, except like be mindful of what you're conveying.

You know, and that's so hard, though, in the moment, because like you could say something when you're when you're so mad or you're so frustrated and totally you just never know what they're going to remember, like really hold on to.

Yeah. And I think that's where the practice of like meditation and mindfulness can really help, because like you don't want to be at the mercy of whatever is the first thought that comes to your mind or the first thing, the words that are you feel the impulse to come out of your mouth. You want to be.

you want to have like just a step away from that like immediate impulse and to be able to like really consciously decide, do I really want to be saying that?

Right. That's me. I'm second guessing everything. Well, we could talk about where to find your book.

Yes. So I guess where you find books. Barnes and Noble, Amazon.

Yeah.

I mean, it's published by Hachette. So if you, I guess this is coming out after it's coming out. So Don't pre-order it. Just order the damn thing. It comes out March 25th. You can get it on Amazon. You can go to Hachette and order it. Or you can, whatever. Barnes and Nobles are going to have it. And I am going to be popping around a few places. Or if you want, you can reach out to AmandaKnox.com.

You know what? Actually, one person has ever apologized to me directly. No, I take that back. Two people. Um, David Spade apologized to me because he like cracked a joke about me. Like there was this one point where, um, I was potentially going to write like an advice column for the local newspaper.

Leave a message. You can send me your book and I can sign it or send a message. That's all things. So if you want to come and get in contact with me, AmandaKnox.com. There's a contact form. That's where you can find anything about my work, Labyrinths, all of the stuff that I work on.

And Labyrinths is her podcast with her husband.

Labyrinths is my podcast. The Innocence Center is the innocence organization that I work with. But I also do a lot of fundraising and helping work with other innocence projects. So do please look into your local innocence project.

I'm so happy that you came. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you so much. It's been great.

I did not expect it to happen today.

And then that glass of wine progressed into me becoming a unicorn for them.

Just, you know, like, Hey, some, some advice is someone who's been through a whole hell of a lot of shit. Like, here's some things I've learned. Here's some advice. And like on his show, he cracked a joke about how like it was going to be called deer stabby. And it was just like a very unkind, like really dismissive joke towards me. Right. Um, and I, I don't even know how it like came up.

I think I might've told a comedian friend of mine or not. I don't know how he, like, I don't know even if he found out that I was hurt by it, but like he DM me on Instagram to say, Hey, I realized that that was a really shitty joke and I'm sorry. And I was just like, Damn, David Spade. Thank you. And then another person I actually interviewed on my podcast was a young woman who was a model.

or is a model, still is a model, but like back in the day, very young model who had been hired by Vice to pose as me in an Amanda Knox themed photo shoot, where there were various different scenes, but a lot of them were like, sexily posing in a prison cell or like at the one of the big, the main photo was her holding a big meat cleaver covered in like blood.

And, um, and she, you know, it was just like a random job that she had. It was very last minute. She has showed up and was posing as me. And then only years later did she realize like, Oh my God, what was I a part of? And of course she was not the person who had orchestrated and, and,

come up with a theme of this shoot like she was probably the least responsible for that shoot sure but she was the face okay and she felt horrible that like her image was used to portray me in that kind of way and so she reached out personally again on instagram Social media isn't all bad to just say, like, I'm really sorry.

And then, like, I had her on my podcast to discuss what that experience was like for her.

And as you can see, I tabbed so many things. Some of the things that are just I think a lot of people can resonate with. But so much of it I did tab to bring up today. Awesome. I was thinking this morning while I was getting ready, like. What do you want from this interview? Because I want to tell your story in the way that you want to be heard the same way that you describe in this book.

Had you seen the photos? Oh, yes. Oh, you did.

I had seen the photos. I had seen the photos years before and been hurt by them. But I never thought that anyone would. Right.

I mean, I, it feels to me after reading this, like, I know that you are, after reading this, you know, you want to be kind and have sort of empathy for people and try to understand them. where they are, but I don't know how you continue on without being angry. Do you ever go back and forth with, with that? Oh yeah.

Yeah. No, I think a big misconception that I think people have is that if you are angry, you're only angry. Or if you are, you appear not angry, then you do not experience anger. Like that is not the case. And I think if you were to interview a lot of exonerees, you would see that like there is this level of like weird confidence peace about them.

Like a lot of, not all of us, but a lot of us have this very forgiving, generous attitude towards the people who have harmed us. And I think that's in part due to the fact that our trauma was not just a trauma of an instant, right? It wasn't just the moment we were wrongly convicted and sentenced to, in my case, 26 years in prison. It was the fact that it just kept going.

You wake up and you're still in a prison cell where you shouldn't be, and years go by where you live with this trauma that keeps asserting itself and keeps reopening the wound every single day. And there's only so much anger you can hold while you are surviving an ongoing, protracted, prolonged trauma. And so you learn to hold the trauma

and also hold on to what you need to survive that protracted trauma. And what you need to survive often is not anger. It is a sense of like acceptance And acknowledgement of the imperfections of reality and other human beings.

You described how you got to that place in this book. But even as I was reading it, that was something that I couldn't relate to that. Because when I think, you talked about putting yourself in someone else's shoes. I was trying to do that. Yeah. And the place that I got to was just anger. Like I don't.

And I think that you're incredibly brave and strong for having that mindset and getting to that place because putting myself in your shoes, I really feel like I would be so angry all the time.

I mean, here's the thing. The anger is there. It's just not the only feeling, right? I'm still angry, you know, like it's because it's an angering situation. It is an injustice. And so I experience anger to this day. I experience hurt to this day because there are still ways that I'm continuing this. protracted trauma is not over for me.

Like I just got a little while ago, I just got reconvicted of the lesser crime in this case. And, you know, they say that I was sentenced to three years time served and like, that's bullshit. And like, I'm still fighting an ongoing drama of being the girl accused of murder and the girl who's guilt adjacent. And like, all of that is still happening. And

You don't want to be remembered as the girl accused of murder. And so I don't want to perpetuate that if I don't have to.

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Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing that I hope from this interview is honestly that people will read.

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even if say I had been acquitted and everything was actually, actually over and everyone agreed that like I had nothing to do with it and I never had to explain myself to another human being ever again. That doesn't mean the anger goes away because you are still experiencing.

I love this image of grief that I once heard that it's, I think a poet did described it as carrying a box that you can't really quite get your hands around and So you're constantly always like awkwardly positioning yourself to carry it. And then you think you have it for a while, but then your arm gets tired. And so you have to move it around again and hold it in a new way.

And I think that is this, that is true about life because we are not static human beings in every moment. We are changing, becoming a mom forced me to hold that grief in an incompletely new way. And so I, what inspires that emotion of anger. is, again, these renewed triggers. But at the same time, it's not the only feeling that I feel. I feel sadness. I feel gratitude.

free my search for meaning because like there's this impression that like my story is encapsulated in this what this bad thing that happened to me and now it's over and the end my story's over and that happens to a lot of exonerees I'm not the only one who has had the experience of the worst experience of your life being so utterly defining and then the minute you get out of prison you eat your first hamburger I call it the hamburger moment because it's always like a McDonald's hamburger they're

I feel gratitude that I'm alive, that I have the opportunity to speak to someone like you who's bothered to find out who I am. Don't make me cry. And I'm... I'm so lucky that I get to have a family. I mean, there's so many ways that I am so, so lucky.

But I wish that people would give you the chance. And I got frustrated for you. It was really hard to read certain aspects because, you know, I went... I know that you've done other podcast interviews. And so I went to go look after I read the book. I went to look and I'm like, I just... Do we have tissues?

I got really frustrated because I could feel the pain and the conflict that you have gone through and what you're still going through. And so I got frustrated when I was like reading the comments because I'm like, you guys have no idea the internal struggles that you're going to face for the rest of your life. And, you know, I do feel like everyone owes you something.

And I know that you don't feel that way necessarily. Right.

I mean, we all owe each other something, right? Like I don't pretend that I'm the only person who has ever had a shitty thing happen to them, you know? You've had a shitty thing happen to you. I just don't happen to know about it. Right. Kind of everyone knows about the shitty thing I had happen to me.

It might have been sooner if she wasn't in such a remote area, but it was the type of path you wouldn't even know was there unless you knew. By 8 p.m., a flurry of people, including paramedics, rush Dana into the hospital on a gurney. And there, in the waiting room, is her family. They've been there for about two hours.

Ever since they figured out something was wrong, and now they are watching their Dana, 23-year-old Dana Ireland, fighting for her life. When detectives speak with Dana's older sister, Sandy, in the waiting room, they discover Sandy moved to the Big Island a few years earlier, and Dana came to visit often. Then, only two months prior, Dana decided to stay in Hawaii for good.

So for the holidays, Dana and Sandy's parents, John and Louise Ireland, decided to fly in from Virginia and join them on the Big Island for a few weeks. The family says earlier that day, before they were planning on celebrating Christmas Eve, Dana decided to go on a bike ride. So she borrowed her sister Sandy's bike and headed out to her friend Mark's house, which is about a seven-mile ride.

But when Sandy and her boyfriend Jim were driving over to their parents' rental house around 5 p.m., they saw something on the side of the road that caught their attention. A crowd of people all gathered around what looked like the scene of an accident. Sandy went from curious to terrified when she recognized the crushed bike lying in the road.

It was her bike, the one she had just let Dana borrow a couple hours earlier. Next to it was Dana's wristwatch, the band completely broken, a foot-long chunk of blonde hair, and a single white athletic shoe, still tied. Sandy and Jim rushed to her parents' rental, which was just minutes away, to tell them what they saw, and they all headed back to the scene.

But when they arrived, Dana's mom, Louise, saw what was going on, assumed Dana had been involved in some kind of accident, and so the family headed over to the local hospital in case she showed up. But they never imagined she would show up like this. They watch in shock as the doctors do their best to save Dana. But she is just too far gone.

A little after midnight on Christmas morning, Dana dies after hours of attempted lifesaving measures. Her cause of death, exsanguination, or blood loss, due to multiple traumatic injuries of the head, neck, chest, abdomen, and pelvis. In Dana's autopsy report, Dr. Charles Reinhold notes a disturbing amount of injuries.

Dana's chest, back, arms, legs, and face were covered with abrasions, cuts, and bruises. Her collarbone and pelvis were fractured. She had extensive hemorrhaging in her heart, lungs, stomach, and bladder. But the doctors find something even more disturbing and which can't be explained by a car accident. a bite mark on her left breast, and the presence of semen.

So while Dana's family is reeling from her sudden death, police scour not just the one, but the two scenes related to Dana, which are about five miles apart. The first scene is on Kapoho Kai Drive, where Dana's bike was discovered. They find tire impressions in the dirt.

They make plaster casts of the tracks and take several pictures of tire marks, including a single deep gouge mark on Kapoho Kai Drive, which larger double tire tracks lead into. Detectives identify the gouge mark as the point at which the bicycle tire was driven into the road from the collision. They find Dana's black bicycle seat on the side of the road near the tracks.

Once finished at the collision scene, detectives head five miles away to the Waawaa Fishing Trail, where Dana had been found. She was about 80 to 90 feet off the main road in the bushes, just off the right side of the trail. Leaves surrounding her were bloody, too, as if she'd been placed or possibly thrown there in an effort to conceal her.

Her jean shorts and her missing white avia tennis shoe are found nearby. But there's more. There's a child's black McGregor shoe, the left one only, and two white socks stuffed inside. There's also a blue-colored T-shirt, size large, with a print of a station wagon and the Jimmy Z logo, which was a popular brand at the time, especially on the Big Island.

Then, up the trail, about halfway between the road and where Dana was found, a black knit adult sock and a red panty, size large. Police also find cigarette butts and two Corona beer bottles. Everything gets collected and tagged. But what is at the scene is only part of the story. The question still stands as to how Dana could have ended up there.

After speaking with her family and witnesses at both crime scenes, authorities tried to build a rough timeline of events based on everything they know so far, which begins at the home of Mark Evans in Apohika'o at 4.10 p.m.

Mark was the friend Dana went to visit on her bike the night of the murder, and he told police that while their relationship in the beginning leaned a little towards the romantic side, they were totally platonic. Sometime shortly thereafter, the police speak to a witness who says they saw a woman who looked like Dana passing places called Shacks and Secrets, both local surfing hangout spots.

Based on this, authorities determined she was run over at approximately 4.40 p.m., less than half a mile from her parents' vacation land rental home, which she was most likely headed back to for the family's Christmas Eve dinner.

Then, as she was riding her bike, she was struck in the rear by a vehicle heading in the Makai direction, aka east towards the sea, on Kapoho Kai Drive, which would indicate that Dana was also traveling in the Makai direction, on the right side of the road, before someone grabbed her and drove away to move her to that isolated area along the trail.

It's 9.21 a.m. on Tuesday, January 24th, 2023. And a man named Ian Schweitzer is standing in a courtroom in Hilo, Hawaii. He's not a total stranger to this feeling or to the criminal justice system in general. He's been here before. But this time, it's for very different reasons. Over 23 years ago, Ian was convicted of a crime he firmly asserts he did not commit.

There, she would endure a nightmare before being left for dead. As detectives continued to work to fill in the pieces, a flurry of calls and leads about trucks, vans, and SUVs believed to be in the area flows in from the community. One comes from Eric Carlsmith. He lives on the first house on the left on Ililani Road, and he says he was with his girlfriend Karina on Christmas Eve.

He tells police he noticed a pickup truck facing southwest at the intersection of Ililani Road and Kapohokai Drive. This was the spot where Dana was hit.

So police are focusing on a truck or van, and this makes sense. The road from Vacationland to the Ocean Trail off Beach Road, where Dana was found, is barely drivable by a car. It's a tucked away, isolated, unpaved fishing trail of sorts, and really only known to the locals in the area. It'd be hard to find otherwise. But obviously, they still need more.

And fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, there's no shortage of witness accounts. And this is the part where I would have walked you through detectives interviewing each one of them from the day Dana was found. Like Ida Smith, the woman who first found Dana.

Or Demian Fierro, who was 10 at the time and was one of the first ones to discover the broken bike in the road.

But like I said before, the story we were planning on telling you when we first started investigating in 2023 is a very different one today in 2025. Which means how we tell it to you is also very different, because what holds weight now is not the same as then. So instead, in this series, I'll be focusing on what you need to know to understand how we ended up where we are today.

How so many lives got tangled up in one of the most devastating and high-profile cases to ever hit the Big Island. Coming up on this season of 3... There were no winners. There were no winners in this entire situation.

That's next in Chapter 2, which you can listen to right now.

And for almost two decades, the Innocence Project has been trying to help him prove it. Ian's team, including the legendary Barry Sheck, who co-founded the original Innocence Project in 1992, well, they would spend the next seven hours stating their case in front of Judge Kubota.

That's Ken Lawson, the co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. They have been looking into Ian's case since around 2006. But when Ken started in 2010, he took it over, and ever since, he's been damn near determined to prove his client's innocence. But no one had predicted that today would be the day. Especially not Ian.

To everyone's surprise, the judge announces his verdict later that same day.

It's a feeling very few people understand. Being charged and convicted of a crime you didn't commit. While his story played out a little differently, Ian's brother Sean is also one of those people.

And so am I.

I'm Amanda Knox, and while studying abroad in 2007, what was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime college experience turned into a life-altering nightmare. One I would spend the following eight years trapped inside of and will carry with me for the rest of my life.

In February 2023, after Ian was released from prison, I traveled to Hawaii and met him in person. Little did I know that almost two years later, I would be sitting down now with you all to tell you what has happened since that very conversation. Behind every wrongful conviction is a devastating and complicated web that is almost impossible to untangle.

But during this series, we're going to try to do just that. Because justice doesn't have to be complicated. And the victims in this case deserve clarity. Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

Over the past 18 months, we've had a team of people who've been out on the Hawaiian islands investigating this story, talking to the people that were there firsthand, some who have never spoken out before, recording in-depth interviews that you will hear nowhere else. We've poured through nearly 40,000 pages of documents about this case.

We've listened to countless hours of audio, from witness stories and confessions to secret grand jury testimony and never-before-heard interviews with jailhouse informants. All so we could discover the truth behind the murder of Dana Ireland and the three families who will never be the same because of it.

But what we didn't expect was that the story would change drastically over the last year and a half as we investigated. Actually, no one did. In July 2024, the world found out who really killed Dana Ireland. A name that never popped up on investigators' radar matched the DNA left at the scene and on the body of Dana Ireland.

But to understand how we got here, you have to understand what has transpired in the 33 years since Dana Ireland was murdered. I'm Amanda Knox, and this is 3, Season 2. Murder in Vacationland.

We're asking you to come with us to the Big Island to hear the untold story of what really happened to Dana Ireland and how her death impacted the lives of three families, the Irlands, the Schweitzers, and the Paulines.

Chapter 1, Christmas in Hawaii. It's December 1991 in a small town, Kapoho, located on the eastern end of what's known as the Big Island of Hawaii. It's not the place most mainlanders think of when they imagine the Hawaii islands. It's quieter, slower, serene, the ultimate tropical paradise, and often called one of Hawaii's best-kept secrets.

And within Kapoho, there is this little subdivision called, almost too perfectly, Vacationland. At around 5.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, a local woman named Ida Smith had just gotten home from running some afternoon errands and is settling back when she hears something strange. The call of a hawk? No. She realizes what she's hearing is not bird calls.

It's sounding more like a girl who is calling for help. Ida quickly follows the direction of the faint screams, which take her towards a vacant house near her property. And then she sees her. About 80 to 90 feet down the narrow gravel roadway towards the waterfront, surrounded by bushes, is a young woman in desperate need of medical attention.

She is barely clothed, and it's clear she is suffering from numerous injuries by the amount of blood on her. And based on her appearance, Ida also believes the woman has been sexually assaulted.

Ida books it to the main road on the other side of her home to flag down the first car she sees. Thankfully, it doesn't take long, and in a matter of minutes, a group of individuals, including a nurse who lives nearby, are down there comforting the victim as they anxiously wait for an ambulance to arrive. And they're praying it won't be long, because the woman's condition is only getting worse.

It's obvious she is in severe pain, and through it, she's trying to make words. Some are coherent, some not. But they can make out her name. Dana. Dana. By 6.20 p.m., an officer makes his way to the scene, but unfortunately, the ambulance doesn't arrive for another hour. Once arrived, Ida and the group watch as Dana is whisked away towards Hilo Hospital, two hours after Ida found her.

for my safety and who I'd been raised to trust and obey. And they are yelling at me. They are contradicting me. They're telling me that what I'm saying doesn't make any sense. They're telling me that I'm lying. But then on top of that, so these are all, you know, these bullying tactics are very effective at getting people to falsely confess. But on top of that, they lied to me.

What was the biggest and most egregious lie? The biggest and most egregious lie was that they knew that I was present when the crime occurred. They knew. That's what they told you that— And that was incredibly destabilizing for me because that was not what I remembered. Like I was at my boyfriend's house the entire night. I kept insisting that can't be true, that can't be true.

But they insisted that it was true and they knew for sure. And so the next lie on top of that was that because I was present and that I had witnessed this crime, I had trauma-induced amnesia. They insisted that my brain didn't remember the truth precisely because I had witnessed the crime and therefore was traumatized.

And my brain had been making up an alternate reality that I thought I was remembering staying at my boyfriend's house when in fact I was at my house when the crime occurred. And you believed it. You started to believe that. I started to believe it because after hours of insisting upon my innocence and that that wasn't true and that I wasn't lying, I started to question myself. Like, I...

Again, I was suggestible in that moment because there's only so long you can argue with authority figures before you, at least for me, I started to question myself. It's classic gaslighting. They found a text message on my phone that I had sent to my boss, Patrick Lumumba, the night of the murder. He had told me that I didn't need to come in for work at the pub.

I had texted him back, sure, have a good night, see you later. And the police interpreted my text message to him as me making an appointment to see him the night of the murder. They were convinced that they had me dead to rights, that I had let this man, Patrick, into my house and that he was the murderer and that I was covering for him.

And then after hours of berating me and telling me that this was true, I started to question myself. And given what they were suggesting to me, I tried to piece together an idea in my mind of what could have happened that night and what ultimately came out.

was an incoherent sort of patchwork of of images of like me meeting my boss, Patrick, outside the basketball court and me being in the kitchen. And I never told them that I witnessed him doing anything like I could not imagine. And I could my brain could not bring myself to do it. But it was enough. Just that was enough for them to say, OK, we're going to arrest him.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yes, if there is a legal avenue for proving my innocence, I will pursue it. It was not my decision to go arrest Patrick Lumumba. He was arrested in the middle of the night by police based on a crazy incoherent statement. He was kept in prison despite the fact that he had an ironclad alibi that came out immediately. Even after he was released, the police held his pub.

They closed his pub down as part of the investigation, even though it had nothing to do with the murder. And it caused him to incur incredible financial losses. So he had to sell his home in Perugia to pay for those losses. And on top of all of that,

There was the psychological trauma of being like ripped from his family's arms in the middle of the night, which hearkened back to a trauma that he had had in childhood where his father was kidnapped in the middle of the night and he never saw his father again. So like trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma, this man has been through hell. Have you all ever spoken?

You know, we actually spoke recently. I had never really had a chance to speak to him directly for years and years and years. He reached out to my attorney and said that he wanted to talk to me because he was writing a book. And I sent him an email just explaining to him, like, you know, Patrick, here's what really happened. And I in no way intended to falsely accuse you.

If anything, I was brainwashed and I immediately retracted my statements. And I was so sorry. And I'm so sorry for everything that he had been through. But I really did not mean to do any of that. And I tried to retract and take it back as soon as I possibly could within hours. And he just wasn't interested. He wasn't interested in hearing it. He wasn't interested in talking about it.

I think because the record is so convoluted. I think that so many different stories arose around this case. And really, a product was delivered by the prosecution and the media that resonated with people, even though it wasn't based on anything and it wasn't true. And that product really was this idea that women hate other women. It really came down to that, this idea that young women—

He just wanted me to pay him money. And I think that I'm disappointed by that. I mean, he had the same experience of being arrested and mistreated by the police.

And I don't think police should be allowed to lie to people and create false realities around them because it is when you distort reality around them that someone starts to question their own sanity and they are made accomplices to police misconduct.

After my conviction, I really settled into this idea that this was my world. It was a very small world. It was very contained. It was very controlled. And it was populated by all of these women who, by comparison to me, were very unlucky. They were abused. They were neglected. They were impoverished. I think I was the only person there who had all of my teeth removed.

There were like the level of need and poverty that I encountered in that environment stunned me. Like I did not know that there were people who could not read an analog clock or that didn't know that the earth was a sphere. And these were the people that were my community. And. I was also the famous one. I was the one who was getting constant letters.

So many of these women were just forgotten by everyone, including their own families. So I looked at them and I thought, God, I am so lucky. And one way, you know, a very important way to survive prison is to be useful because it's an environment where there's a lot of need and not a lot of resources.

And I realized very quickly that I was, especially after a year in prison, and by that time I was fluent in Italian, I was able to function effectively. As a translator. So lots of the women that were imprisoned were not Italian, were not fluent in Italian, had no idea what anyone was telling them.

A lot of people from various African nations, also Eastern Europe. But, you know, there was a couple of Chinese women that were in there at one point. And I was translating for them by like taking I just happened to have this English to Chinese dictionary because I'm a language nerd. Because there were no translators. There were no translators in the prison.

So I ended up being the unofficial translator for everyone and every language. And then the other thing that became my sort of unofficial job was scribe. Everyone really thought that my handwriting was very beautiful. And when you are someone who is in prison, especially if you're –

feeling lonely and are looking for some attention from some male counterpart, wherever he may be, you wanted to appear pretty to them. And the way that you could appear pretty is by having pretty handwriting.

secretly hate each other and are constantly competing with each other and in certain situations will sexually assault and murder each other. And it was a lie and it's shocking to me that it wasn't seen for what it was at the time. But it was a story that resonated with people and I think continues to resonate with people. And I think that in a big way, it wasn't even about Meredith anymore.

Yes, I'm so glad you brought it up because it is a very human thing to have a sexual identity, to have an intimate identity. And I was being vilified and punished for this perceived...

sexuality and I and so I absolutely was in conflict with my own sexuality also like you bring up Raffaele and Raffaele what is a deeply romantic person at heart like we hit it off immediately in part because he was a nerd and I'm I love a good nerd but also because he was just so sweet and romantic with me from the get-go and even while we were you know surviving this insane

struggle together, he was ready to continue to pursue a romance with me, even while we were in prison and on trial. And because I was being so punished for my actions, my sexual identity, I resisted it. And I broke it off with him in prison because in part I was feeling I was feeling like the reason I was even in there was because I was a sexually active young woman.

And then over the years, I first of all realized that my life might be spent a great portion of it inside these prison walls and that An intimate life, a sexual life, was a part of being human. It wasn't something to be ashamed of. It wasn't something to repress. It was just one of the things that makes life worth living.

That is one of the sort of unresolved, I should probably go to therapy for this kind of thing. I'm very claustrophobic. I've actually always been claustrophobic. So that ended up becoming even more aggravated in prison. But at the same time... At the same time, it was almost like an exposure therapy because your perspective of your space makes all the difference.

So if I was literally sitting in my jail cell, I had options. I could stare at the barred door or, you know, there were two doors to our cell. One of them was a barred door, but even worse was the solid steel door that was closed shut. at nighttime. So it was just like this solid metal door that I could not open. There wasn't even a handle. There was no way that I could open that door.

I think a lot of people really didn't care very much about her or the person who committed the crime. They cared about this idea of a young woman hating another woman enough to sexually assault and murder them. That was titillating and fascinating to people. And that was ultimately the story that made the rounds of the world and resonated with so many people.

If I looked at that door, I would lose my mind. So instead, I looked out my window. And yes, there are bars on my window, but beyond those bars was a hilltop with a bell tower. There were fields that if you looked close enough, you could see bunnies scampering across it. And just the ability to pivot and change the perspective of, like change the frame of what you are focusing on.

It didn't mean that door was not there. It meant that it wasn't the only thing that was there. And I've tried to take that framing idea with me outside of the prison environment because even when I came home and I found myself in my childhood bedroom... In a way that I was in another prison cell because I could, you know, look out of my window when I was in prison.

I couldn't even do that when I first came home because there were paparazzi standing outside, like right outside of my house, just pointing their cameras at my windows. And so we had to have all of the windows closed and like shuttered and draped. And I remember feeling really claustrophobic, like, oh, my God, oh, my God, I thought I was going to come out of prison.

And now I'm feeling even more trapped. I can't leave my house. I can't leave my room. I can't open the windows. I can't, like, I was struggling with panic attacks.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, thank you for asking that. It's true that I didn't know Meredith very well. I had only known her for a few weeks. That said, when you study abroad, you get to know people really quickly because both of us were new arrivals to Perugia. We were both at the very same moment of our lives. You know, I was 20. She was 21. She was studying journalism. I was studying languages.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And we both happened to rent a room in this beautiful little house overlooking the countryside, and it was perfect. It was that beautiful time of your life when everything is possible and you have every reason to expect to have beautiful experiences. And, you know, I feel so horrible about how she has been misrepresented in the media as well.

Like, the image of Meredith that was presented by the prosecution was of this, like— uptight, judgmental, you know, English girl. And that was not at all who she was. She was, you know, sure, she was a little bit more introverted than me, but she was very kind and very silly. And I remember thinking both that she was very sophisticated and elegant.

And I think part of that was because she had a beautiful British accent. And I always was impressed by that. But other than that, like she also kind of took care of me. Like she was always asking me if I was getting home safe or who I was going out with and just checking in on me and had this very big sisterly air.

Like one thing that haunts me to this day is we found this really cool little vintage shop and she found this sparkly silver dress that she was very excited. She bought because she wanted to wear back home for New Year's Eve. And, of course, she never got to wear that dress, and it just haunts me to this day. Like, I was right there with her.

She was so excited, and I don't even know what happened to it, you know? Like, so much of our lives, like, in a big way, two very young women went to Perugia, and one of them didn't get to go home, and one of them came home completely and utterly changed. And I... It's a grieving process for me, for both of us.

I did, yeah. I think I've struggled both with survivor's guilt as well as with, someone just pointed this out to me, it's like survivor's guilt by proxy, where other people are sort of enforcing survivor's guilt onto me. And I understand where it's coming from, right?

Like so many people only know me in the context of her murder, and in particular through this very negative lens in the context of her murder. And so because they don't imagine me in the fullness of my human being, They sort of anything that I do, whether purposefully publicly or not purposefully publicly, like when I got married, I didn't in no way intended that for that to be a public event.

I went out of my way to make it very, very private and to be very, very secretive. And paparazzi showed up anyway. And then, of course, I get the messages from people saying, you know, who will never get to get married, Meredith. And I just have that thrown in my face constantly as if my life doesn't. doesn't matter because she lost hers.

And I think that that's because they're not capable of imagining me as a real human being.

I guess for me, for a long time, he was the boogeyman, right? Like he was the big scary man who was making decisions to ruin my life and I I was scared of him. I didn't understand him. I also was constantly asking myself, I think that the question that haunted me most that I was attempting to discover the answer to was why? Just simply why?

Like, I've had I don't know how many panic attacks because I I was plagued by this not understanding why this thing had happened to me. And it wasn't, I knew that it wasn't an easy answer, right? Like it wasn't just an evil man sitting in his prosecutor's office, you know, Putting his fingers together like Mr. Burns and chuckling about how he was putting an innocent girl in prison.

That was not what was happening. I knew that to be true. Or at least I assumed that to be true because I tend to think that most people are not psychopaths and I didn't think that he was a psychopath. And it didn't explain even why so many people believed him. And so there had to be something more to it. It had to be more complicated. But I couldn't figure it out.

Like I couldn't understand how this man looked. at a 20-year-old girl with no history of violence, no history of criminality, no motive to commit this crime, and said, that's the person who's responsible for sexual assault and murder. Like, that woman is responsible for a man's crime. And I couldn't wrap my head around it. I couldn't understand why this had happened to me.

And so I spent years thinking about it and trying to understand it until I realized that I could just freaking ask. I could just ask. You wrote him. I wrote him. And you know what? So many people advised me not to. Including your family. Including my family, including everyone in the Innocence Movement. They were all saying it's a waste of time. Prosecutors never apologize.

They never realize that they were wrong. It's a waste of time. He's never going to admit fault. He's never going to... I think the thing that they were afraid of was that I was looking to this person for my well-being. I needed this person to be okay. And they didn't want me... Because there was a big chance that you wouldn't get it, right? I want to understand him.

I want to know who this man is. I know he's not really a boogeyman. So who is this man? But also, if he could only see who I really am, maybe he would realize that he was wrong. And if he realizes that he's wrong, maybe he'll tell other people that he was wrong, and then my life will be much better.

The thing that I tried to do was imagine What Giuliano and I could agree on. Because that's his name, by the way. Yes, sorry. His name is Giuliano. Giuliano Mignini. But at the time he was Dr. Mignini. Dr. Mignini. And I reached out to him and I told him that I wanted to know him outside of this adversarial system where we were pitted against each other from the very beginning.

And my step one was find common ground. What could he and I have in common? And at first, he was resistant. At first, he didn't know whether or not it was even legal for him to talk to me. He's still a working prosecutor, has no idea. It's unprecedented for a defendant to reach out to a prosecutor. And it wasn't until I did a very public talk in Italy acknowledging that he was someone who had

genuine, noble intentions in his prosecution of me, even if he was wrong, that he responded to me. And immediately, I think he was immediately just kind of shocked and impressed that I was willing to see him as a human being, which, I don't know, it just goes to show what kind of echo chamber that he was living in. Again, like he's lived his entire life

being fighting people and being very adversarial. And so someone approached him in this very non-adversarial way, someone like me who had every reason to hate him and to fear him. And he was moved by that and almost immediately moved. We ended up corresponding for two years about everything under the sun, the case, but also our lives.

He has admitted that he could have been wrong. He has admitted to me that I am not the person that he thought he was prosecuting. That if someone were to ask him to prosecute this case again today, he would not because he knows that I am not capable of committing such a crime. But at the same time, he really maintains that at the time that he was trying the case,

He truly believed what he was prosecuting. He truly believed the story that he was spinning. And I believe him that he truly believed it.

Because I had never been brought to the brink of my own sanity like that before and never again to this day. I was questioned constantly. For hours and hours and hours into the night so that I was sleep deprived. Some of it was just what you would generally call bullying. Someone contradicts you. Someone talks over you. They yell at you. I got slapped.

Like there was general just like abuse and overpowering that was happening.

I did not speak fluent Italian, no. I was very elementary level. I certainly could not defend myself under an interrogation. And I think part of the problem was also that I wasn't sure if they were mad at me or were not understanding me because I was not speaking fluent Italian or because they were in fact suspecting me. Like I... I could not interpret what was happening to me.

I'd never even been in a situation where I had been in trouble before. I'd never had to sit down with a principal and talk about being in trouble. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. So I was very much in a very new experience in the immediacy of discovering that my roommate had been murdered. So I was in a state of shock already. And I'm in a room with authority figures who I'm relying on

I've wondered that many times. One of the technologies that I write about in the book is the NIPT, which is a blood test of the pregnant person that can be done very early in pregnancy, as early as nine weeks. And there are now consumer versions of this test that are used to screen The blood for the potential appearance of certain genetic changes. And BWS is so rare.

It's found, I think, at this point in about one in 10,000 births. that it really wouldn't make sense to test every person for it. But I remember asking a doctor, you know, could you do this really early in pregnancy? And she said, yeah, like technically you could. And I really fear...

thinking about who I was as this very scared, newly pregnant person who felt insufficient to the job of parenting, that I would be influenced to consider abortion. And Later in my pregnancy, I had an even scarier prenatal test that suggested that it was possible that the genetic abnormality in my child was catastrophic. And I was stealing myself for abortion at that point, too.

It was not catastrophic. There was not a brain abnormality like I had feared. I was so grateful. that there were just a few places in the United States that I could have sought an abortion had I needed or wanted to. And so nothing about this experience has made me question my feeling that abortion should be available to any person who needs or wants it. in any context.

But I do have this new understanding of the context in which these decisions are being made. And I think that context is really lacking. And so it's not the availability of abortion. It's not even the availability of some of these prenatal tests. Ultimately, I was really glad that my son was diagnosed before he was born because it meant that

his doctors could be waiting for him right when he came out. But I also understood only then that these choices are being made in a culture that highly stigmatizes disability and that expects women to sacrifice everything about themselves and their body in the pursuit of creating a a healthy, which I think is a euphemism for normal, child. And it's that context that I hope we can challenge.

Yeah, I think there's a mode that these apps are working in, which is habituating people to having their bodies and their reproductive activities tracked in order to ostensibly

improve them in some way so as I was using flow you know not only did it present me this idealized cute able-bodied fetus it was feeding me information about what I ought to do the actions I should take the things that I should eat in order to ensure that I had this ideal pregnancy and

As soon as I had an abnormal ultrasound and my pregnancy was recategorized as high risk, I started searching for those terms within Flo's message boards. And they said, I'm sorry, please try searching for something else. And so I felt like even in this subtle way that the app was programmed, I was being told that like my pregnancy had no space in that community.

I think so. I had books too. And, you know, the first difference I noticed is that I wasn't carrying this like big pregnancy book everywhere I went. But my phone was always there. And so even if I did not intend to bring my pregnancy app with me, it was there constantly. And so I found myself looking at it again and again. Also, a book is a set document.

It covers a limited number of scenarios, and there's like a real limitation to that. But it also means that it can't be sort of like tweaked and engineered so that it serves you some seemingly new piece of information like every day or every few hours. I found myself looking at flow during my pregnancy like 10 times a day, even though I think this is so sick.

Thank you so much for having me.

But I was not looking to flow for actual advice or real information. I wasn't taking that information and changing my diet. or my movements, I think I was looking for reassurance that I was doing okay. And so even if I wasn't doing exactly what this app had said, I wasn't missing something major. And there was someone, it really felt like, along with me who was keeping track.

And so there became this real intimacy to our pseudo-relationship that I didn't have with, like, an informational pregnancy book.

You know, I think after the particular circumstances of my pregnancy, I became really interested in prenatal testing and how it was advancing. And interested in the fact that it was so, it seemed like such an exciting category for all of the male tech leaders that we know so much about now.

And it was only through reading about them a little bit that I came to understand that this new ascendant technology that offers what they call polygenic analysis of embryos. So, you know, different outlets promise to find different characteristics, but they're offering everything from screening that predicts an increase in IQ points, that screens for hereditary cancers, all of this stuff.

It's something that you can only use if you're going to go through IVF. And so after... paying for this embryo screening, which is a few thousand dollars, you're also choosing to go through in vitro fertilization, which is not only just a really difficult experience for many people, but extremely expensive and out of reach for most people.

He told me that he saw something that he didn't like, and that phrase has really stuck with me. But what he saw was something that when I saw it, I thought was cute, which is that my son was sticking out his tongue. And that's abnormal if the baby is not just bringing the tongue back into the mouth. Although, of course, I didn't know that at the time.

And as I was reading one story about this, I was really struck by a woman who founded one of these companies who told one of her investors that instead of going through IVF herself, she should simply hire a surrogate and have her do it for her. And that to me really crystallized this idea of like a reproductive technology gap.

I think the thing that worries me the most about these technologies is, again, there seems to be so much interest and investment in understanding technology. what certain children will be like and trying to prevent children with certain differences and very little investment in the care for those children, research that could help these children and adults.

And so I really found myself on both sides of this divide where I had access to what was at the time, you know, some advanced prenatal testing, but was also able to see After my child's birth that, you know, he was being born into a world that is not innovating in the space of accommodating disabilities in the way that it is innovating in the space of trying to prevent them.

I think we are. I mean, I had this experience of during pregnancy, habituating myself to some external authority watching my pregnancy. And then after my child was born, I became the authority who was watching him and surveilling him. And I think there's this way that surveillance can become confused with care and attention and love.

And I had this experience with my kids where I'd installed this fancy baby monitor that I was testing out for the book, and the video was uploaded to some cloud server so I could watch it from anywhere. I could watch them if they were taking a nap in their crib, but I was...

At the coffee shop down the street or whatever and somebody else was there with them and it could make it seem as if I were close to them because I would see my adorable children. and have this experience of being able to just watch them sleep peacefully, which is so different from the experience of dealing with them most of the time.

But it wasn't until one night when the camera was set up and I laid down with my son in his bed and I sensed this presence in the corner of the room, these like four red glowing eyes,

After several weeks of tests, when I was about eight months pregnant, we learned that my son has Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which is an overgrowth disorder that, among other things, can cause a child to have a very enlarged tongue.

She asked for it to be taken out when she was three years old or something and could articulate this because she didn't want the eye, as she called it, to be watching her in her bedroom.

And I think, you know, so many times these technologies are purchased by parents before their kids are even born and they want to do what's right and they're scared, you know, and they want to make sure that they have everything they need like before the child arrives. We're not even giving ourselves a chance to really understand what it is we're getting and whether we actually need it.

Yeah, I had this experience with my son where I heard about a robotic crib called the SNU. Before he was born, I got this secondhand version off of a parental listserv and set it up before he was born. So I was just sitting there waiting for him to come sleep in it. And the SNU promises that SNU babies tend to sleep one to two hours more Yes, right.

And I spent such a long time, like, trying to troubleshoot the SNU to try to get it to work for my baby until eventually I found that I was really, like, troubleshooting my child. And he had become so entwined with the technology. that I really didn't know where the workings of the machine ended and where my son's sleep patterns began.

And so this technology that's often sold as a tool to help us better understand our kids and get data insights into them, in this case for me, it actually made it more difficult for me to understand what was going on with him and how he really wanted to sleep.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing that I don't want to think about is just that very soon my kids will have access to devices, whether it's at school or in our home, where they can just log on themselves and see what's out there. It's something that I'm just not prepared to deal with at the moment.

There are like a couple of things that I was so grateful to have access to during my pregnancy that I hope will be helpful for my kids. And one was, you know, groups that are dedicated to the particular rare disorder that my son has where people who have the syndrome are or family members who are caretakers can come together and just talk about their experiences.

And just seeing the thousands of people who are members of these groups and seeing those numbers is so comforting to me because it reminds me that, like, my son is not alone. We were not alone with him. There is this whole community of people who... They look the same in some way. They experience some of the same social stigmas.

They experience some of the same medical traumas and medical experiences. They just don't exist in a geographical community because the condition is too rare. So these groups are a real reminder for me that the Internet can be such a...

balm to communities of people who can't you know access each other offline and similarly like I think the disability justice community is such like a wonderful community that I hope that my son whether he ends up identifying as disabled or not has some access to and that is really helped by just the accommodation of being able to meet online and so

I think there are so many ways that my kids could find solace there. But I really think we're just so robbed of the ability to understand what good technology would look like because technology is not, for the very most part, being developed for the betterment of human beings. It's being developed to drive profits.

And so all of these like wonderful parts of online communities are embedded in that capitalist structure and they're held hostage by it. And so I really think to the extent, like, I don't think phones are the problem. I don't think the internet is the problem. I think these devices are indicative, unfortunately, of much larger problems. And it's really going to take

like the socialization of technology in order for us to really understand its potential as something that's positive for us and our children.

Sure. The errors I made during my pregnancy knocked at the door of my mind. I drank a glass and a half of wine on Mark's birthday before I knew I was pregnant. I swallowed a tablet of Ativan for acute anxiety after I knew. I took a long hot bath that crinkled my fingertips. I got sick with a fever and fell asleep without thinking about it. I waited until I was almost 35 years old to get pregnant.

I wanted to solve the question of myself before bringing another person into the world, but the answer had not come. Now my pregnancy was, in the language of obstetrics, geriatric. For seven months, we'd all acted like a baby was going to come out of my body like a rabbit yanked from a hat.

The same body that ordered mozzarella sticks from the late-night menu and stared into a computer like it had a soul. The body that had, just a few years prior, snorted a key of cocaine supplied by the party bus driver hired to transport it to medieval times. This body was now working very seriously to generate a new human.

I had posed the body for Instagram, clutching my bump with two hands as if it might bounce away. I had bought a noise machine with a womb setting and thrown away the box. Now I lay on the table as the doctor stood in his chamber, rewinding the tape of my life. My phone sat on an empty chair, six feet away. Smothered beneath my smug maternity dress, it blinked silently with text messages from Mark.

If I had the phone, I could hold it close to the exam table and Google my way out. I could pour my fears into its portal and process them into answers. I could consult the pregnant women who came before me, dust off their old message board posts, and read of long-ago ultrasounds that found weird ears and stuck-out tongues.

They had dropped their baby's fates into the internet like coins into a fountain, and I would scrounge through them all, looking for the lucky penny. For the woman who returned to say, it turned out to be nothing. Trick of light.

Yeah. You know, I started to think about writing a book about technology before I became pregnant, not sort of planning to focus it on this time in my life. And then instantly, once I became pregnant, my relationship with technology became so much more intense. And I really felt myself being influenced by what it was telling me.

I'm someone who, you know, I understand that reproduction is a normal event. But it really came as a shock to me when there was a person growing inside of me and I felt like I really didn't know what to do. And so I also, you know, early in my pregnancy didn't want to talk to any people about it. So I turned to the internet. I turned to apps. Later when my child was born, I turned to gadgets.

And it was only later that I really began to understand that these technologies work as narrative devices. And they were working in my life to tell me a certain story about my role as a parent and the expectations for my child.

I mean, I think I just assumed I did until much later when I started to feel as if it didn't really matter how it happened, that I had created my son and he was wonderful and and I was capable as his mother. But I carried that idea with me for such a long time.

I think what was so clarifying about looking up the medical terminology was that hundreds of years ago there was this idea of the maternal imagination or the maternal impression, which is a pseudoscientific idea that a pregnant woman can see a monkey and

in the zoo and her child will come out with like ape-like traits or that she could see some kind of monstrous thing and that her child will come out to resemble a monster. And this was an explanation for birth defects. And I found that even though all of those ideas had been discredited, there was still this undercurrent of blame that was really palpable to me.

And I even found that at a certain point after my pregnancy had been flagged as high risk and fetal abnormalities had been found in my son, It was me and my pregnancy that became the thing that people with normal pregnancies were advised to avoid. So I would read anti-anxiety books that said, you know, don't spend time thinking about pregnancy complications because they're quite rare.

So I, you know, I too had anxiety and I also had pregnancy complications. And so I felt sort of like I had been brought along on this journey, this highly feminized journey that was supposed to like bring all pregnant women along and tell them what to do. And then, you know, suddenly I had been cast out and I had to sort of scurry over to a different part of the Internet.

Yeah, that's true. There are certainly still pseudoscientific practitioners working, maybe more so this week than last week. I don't even know. But I did find someone who believes that things like cancer, even like the flu, COVID, are caused by internal conflicts.

And there was something about that, even though that's completely false and total nonsense, understanding that that was a cultural idea that this person was crystallizing and promoting really helped me to forgive myself. Because when you put it that way, like, it's completely ludicrous. I know that my son's... genetic condition was not caused by something I thought during pregnancy.

But at the time, there was this sub-rational part of myself that really felt that that was true.

Yeah, you know, I spent the beginning part of my pregnancy using an app called Flow. And Flow presents you with this CGI kind of fetus poppet that looks like a very cute pre-baby and is floating around in this like ethereal mist. And, again, it sounds so ludicrous, but when I was holding that in my hand, it felt on some emotional level like I was looking at my baby.

And then, you know, once doctors began to find some abnormalities on the actual medical portal to my body in the ultrasound, I realized that, of course, this image that Flo had promoted to me was a lie. It has no special insight into the baby inside of me, obviously.

And I also came to understand that it promotes this idea to all of the hundreds of millions of people who use it during pregnancy that that is what their baby ought to look like. That is what they should expect their baby to look like. Um, and once I realized that wasn't the case, you know, I wanted to see images of people like my son. I wanted to understand what his life would be like.

And I wanted to understand what my life would be like as a caretaker for him. So I started like deep Googling Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome. And what I found was A lot of tabloid news of the weird reports about children born with extra large tongues. I found Reddit threads from people who were quite cruel about the very existence of these babies.

I found parents of children who had the condition who were asking for funds for medical care or presenting their children's lives, trying to raise awareness of it and look for acceptance. And I found the response to those people ranged from appreciation to disgust. And it was not until my son was born.

I remember two minutes before my son was born, my doctor finally recommended that I have a C-section. And after like 24 hours of labor or something, I was ready for it. But I cried and I realized that I was crying because I was afraid. I was afraid to meet my son. And the minute I did, like, and he was a person finally who I had a real relationship with.

all of these imagined images of him and potential lives for him dissolved. And it was really only at that moment that I realized how disability can be so divorced from its human context through these technologies and how I really needed to just meet this baby in order to put it back there.

Thank you so much for having me.

He told me that he saw something that he didn't like, and that phrase has really stuck with me. But what he saw was something that when I saw it, I thought was cute, which is that my son was sticking out his tongue. And that's abnormal if the baby is not just bringing the tongue back into the mouth. Although, of course, I didn't know that at the time.

After, you know, several weeks of tests when I was about eight months pregnant, we learned that my son has Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which is an overgrowth disorder that, among other things, can cause a child to have a very enlarged tongue.

Sure. The errors I made during my pregnancy knocked at the door of my mind. I drank a glass and a half of wine on Mark's birthday before I knew I was pregnant. I swallowed a tablet of Ativan for acute anxiety after I knew. I took a long hot bath that crinkled my fingertips. I got sick with a fever and fell asleep without thinking about it. I waited until I was almost 35 years old to get pregnant.

I wanted to solve the question of myself before bringing another person into the world. But the answer had not come. Now my pregnancy was, in the language of obstetrics, geriatric. For seven months, we'd all acted like a baby was going to come out of my body like a rabbit yanked from a hat.

The same body that ordered mozzarella sticks from the late-night menu and stared into a computer like it had a soul. The body that had, just a few years prior, snorted a key of cocaine supplied by the party bus driver hired to transport it to medieval times. This body was now working very seriously to generate a new human.

I had posed the body for Instagram, clutching my bump with two hands as if it might bounce away. I had bought a noise machine with a womb setting and thrown away the box. Now I lay on the table as the doctor stood in his chamber, rewinding the tape of my life. My phone sat on an empty chair, six feet away. Smothered beneath my smug maternity dress, it blinked silently with text messages from Mark.

If I had the phone, I could hold it close to the exam table and Google my way out. I could pour my fears into its portal and process them into answers. I could consult the pregnant women who came before me, dust off their old message board posts, and read of long-ago ultrasounds that found weird ears and stuck-out tongues.

They had dropped their babies' fates into the internet like coins into a fountain, and I would scrounge through them all, looking for the lucky penny. For the woman who returned to say, it turned out to be nothing. Trick of light.

Yeah. You know, I started to think about writing a book about technology before I became pregnant, not sort of planning to focus it on this time in my life. And then instantly, once I became pregnant, my relationship with technology became so much more intense. And I really felt myself being influenced by what it was telling me.

I'm someone who, you know, I understand that reproduction is a normal event. But it really came as a shock to me when there was a person growing inside of me and I felt like I really didn't know what to do. And so I also, you know, early in my pregnancy didn't want to talk to any people about it. So I turned to the Internet. I turned to apps. Later, when my child was born, I turned to gadgets.

And it was only later that I really began to understand that these technologies work as narrative devices. And they were working in my life to tell me a certain story about my role as a parent and the expectations for my childhood.

I think so. I had books, too. And, you know, the first difference I noticed is that I wasn't carrying this, like, big pregnancy book everywhere I went. Right, right. But my phone was always there. And so even if I did not intend to bring my pregnancy app with me, it was there constantly. And so I found myself looking at it again and again.

I think I was looking for reassurance that I was doing okay. And so even if I wasn't doing exactly what this app had said, I wasn't missing something major. And there was someone, it really felt like, along with me who was keeping track. And so there became this real intimacy between to our pseudo-relationship that I didn't have with, like, an informational pregnancy book.

You know, I think after the particular circumstances of my pregnancy, I became really interested in prenatal testing and how it was advancing. And interested in the fact that it was so, it seemed like such an exciting category for all of the male tech leaders that we know so much about now.

And it was only through reading about them a little bit that I came to understand that this new ascendant technology that offers what they call polygenic analysis of embryos So, you know, different outlets promise to find different characteristics, but they're offering everything from screening that predicts an increase in IQ points, that screens for hereditary cancers, all of this stuff.

It's something that you can only use if you're going to go through IVF. And so after... paying for this embryo screening, which is a few thousand dollars, you're also choosing to go through in vitro fertilization, which is not only just a really difficult experience for many people, but extremely expensive and out of reach for most people.

And as I was reading one story about this, I was really struck by a woman who founded one of these companies who told one of her investors that instead of going through IVF herself, she should simply hire a surrogate and have her do it for her. And that to me really crystallized this idea of like a reproductive technology gap.

I think the thing that worries me the most about these technologies is, again, there seems to be so much interest and investment in understanding the what certain children will be like and trying to prevent children with certain differences and very little investment in the care for those children, research that could help these children and adults.

And so I really found myself on both sides of this divide where I had access to what was at the time, you know, some advanced prenatal testing, but was also able to see after my child's birth that, you know, who's being born into a world that is not innovating in the space of accommodating disabilities in the way that it is innovating in the space of trying to prevent them.

I think we are. I mean, I had this experience of during pregnancy habituating myself to some external authority watching my pregnancy. And then after my child was born, I became the authority who was watching him and surveilling him. And I think there's this way that surveillance can become confused with care and attention and love.

And I had this experience with my kids where I'd installed this fancy baby monitor that I was testing out for the book, and the video was uploaded to some cloud server so I could watch it from anywhere. I could watch them if they were taking a nap in their crib, but I was...

At the coffee shop down the street or whatever and somebody else was there with them and it could make it seem as if I were close to them because I would see my adorable children. and have this experience of being able to just watch them sleep peacefully, which is so different from the experience of dealing with them most of the time.

But it wasn't until one night when the camera was set up and I laid down with my son in his bed and I sensed this presence in the corner of the room, these like four red glowing eyes,

She asked for it to be taken out when she was three years old or something and could articulate this because she didn't want the eye, as she called it, to be watching her in her bedroom.

And I think, you know, so many times these technologies are purchased by parents before their kids are even born and they want to do what's right and they're scared, you know, and they want to make sure that they have everything they need like before the child arrives. We're not even giving ourselves a chance to really understand what it is we're getting and whether we actually need it.

Yeah, I had this experience with my son where I heard about a robotic crib called the SNU before he was born. I got this secondhand version off of a parental listserv and set it up before he was born. So I was just sitting there waiting for him to come sleep in it. And the SNU promises that SNU babies tend to sleep one to two hours more Right. Extra, right. Yeah.

And I spent such a long time like trying to troubleshoot the SNU to try to get it to work for my baby until eventually I found that I was really like troubleshooting my child. And he had become so entwined with the technology. That I really didn't know where the workings of the machine ended and where my son's, you know, sleep patterns began.

And so this technology that's often sold as a tool to help us better understand our kids and get like data insights into them. In this case for me, it actually made it more difficult for me to understand what was going on with him and like how he really wanted to sleep.

I love that idea.

I love that idea. Start something new.

So I ended up being the unofficial translator for everyone and every language. And then the other thing that became my sort of unofficial job was scribe. Everyone really thought that my handwriting was very beautiful. And when you are someone who is in prison, especially if you're feeling lonely and are looking for some attention from some family,

a male counterpart, wherever he may be, you wanted to appear pretty to them. And the way that you could appear pretty is by having pretty handwriting.

I would write their letters. Yeah, their little love letters. And sometimes they got a little frisky with the love letter. They would just dictate to me and I would write down. But sometimes they would say, but Amanda, you're better at saying this than us. Say this in like a really sexy way. And I was like, no, I'm just you. You dictate. I write. Right.

Yes, I'm so glad you brought it up because it is a very human thing to have a sexual identity, to have an intimate identity. And I was being vilified and punished for this perceived...

sexuality and I and so I absolutely was in conflict with my own sexuality also like you bring up Raffaele and Raffaele what is a deeply romantic person at heart like we hit it off immediately in part because he was a nerd and I'm I love a good nerd but also because he was just so sweet and romantic with me from the get-go and even while we were you know surviving this insane

struggle together, he was ready to continue to pursue a romance with me, even while we were in prison and on trial. And I, because I was being so punished for my sexual identity, I resisted it. And I broke it off with him in prison because I, in part, I was feeling I was feeling like the reason I was even in there was because I was a sexually active young woman.

And then over the years, I first of all realized that my life might be spent, a great portion of it, inside these prison walls. And that an intimate life, a sexual life, was a part of being human. It wasn't something to be ashamed of. It wasn't something to repress. It was just one of the things that makes life worth living.

That is one of the sort of unresolved, I should probably go to therapy for this kind of thing. I'm very claustrophobic. I've actually always been claustrophobic. So that ended up becoming even more aggravated in prison. And even when I came home and I found myself in my childhood bedroom, you know,

In a way that I was in another prison cell because I could, you know, look out of my window when I was in prison. I couldn't even do that when I first came home because there were paparazzi standing outside, like right outside of my house, just pointing their cameras at my windows. And so we had to have all of the windows closed and like shuttered and draped.

And I remember feeling really claustrophobic, like, oh, my God, oh, my God, I thought I was going to come out of prison. And now I'm feeling even more trapped. I can't leave my house. I can't leave my room. I can't open the windows. I can't, like, I was struggling with panic attacks.

Yeah, absolutely. I think all of my family was really, was fighting to get Amanda home again, right? Like they had given up so much of their lives and upended everything. Everything came about saving Amanda. And I think there was a level of disappointment when they realized that, yes, they had gotten Amanda out of prison, but they hadn't actually saved Amanda. Because...

the girl who I was who had never had anything bad happen to her who trusted everyone and who was always optimistic and always you know that person died in Italy and she had to be grieved um and I don't think my family was ready for that I wasn't ready for that

And I think another thing that I had to realize, too, was that my family was also not the same after everything that had happened because they had gone through an experience that I did not have access to. And they were changed in ways that I didn't expect. And so there were some rough, rough periods there.

I have a three-year-old daughter and a one-and-a-half-year-old son. Yeah, yeah. And he's a cutie. But Eureka is at that wonderful age where she wants to know everything and she wants to know why. And part of that has been, you know, my story. She wants to know about when mommy went to Italy. And I thought a lot about how I would talk to her about this story.

But I've realized that, yes, I 100 percent believe in transparency and honesty. And I should always answer my daughter's questions with age appropriate honesty and not treat this story as like this weird taboo aspect of my life and our lives. But even more important than that, I think that children see what we do. more than they listen to what we say.

And I feel really confident that I can show my daughter that stuff will happen to you that is painful and out of your control and inevitable, but it doesn't define you and you can find your way through it. All of us go through something. And I want her to see deep down that that that is not the end, and that is not all, and that, in fact, that is just the beginning.

And I feel so confident that I can do that for her, and I can be there for her.

Thank you so much for having me.

I think because the record is so convoluted. I think that so many different stories arose around this case. And really, a product was delivered by the prosecution and the media that resonated with people, even though it wasn't based on anything and it wasn't true. And that product really was this idea that women hate other women.

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It really came down to that, this idea that young women secretly hate each other and are constantly competing with each other and in certain situations will sexually assault and murder each other. And it was a lie. And it's shocking to me that it wasn't seen for what it was at the time. But it was a story that resonated with people and I think continues to resonate with people.

And I think that in a big way, it wasn't even about Meredith anymore. I think a lot of people really didn't care very much about her or the person who committed the crime. They cared about This idea of a young woman hating another woman enough to sexually assault and murder them. That was titillating and fascinating to people.

And that was ultimately the story that made the rounds of the world and resonated with so many people.

Oh, thank you for asking that. It's true that I didn't know Meredith very well. I had only known her for a few weeks. That said, when you study abroad, you get to know people really quickly because both of us were new arrivals to Perugia. We were both at the very same moment of our lives. I was 20. She was 21. She was studying journalism. I was studying languages.

And we both happened to rent a room in this beautiful little house overlooking the countryside. And it was perfect. It was that beautiful time of your life when everything is possible and you have every reason to expect to have beautiful experiences. And, you know, I feel so horrible about how she has been misrepresented in the media as well. Like the

Yes, they had gotten Amanda out of prison, but they hadn't actually saved Amanda because the girl who I was, that person died in Italy.

The image of Meredith that was presented by the prosecution was of this like uptight, judgmental, you know, English girl. And that was not at all who she was. She was, you know, sure, she was a little bit more introverted than me, but she was very kind and very silly. I remember thinking both that she was very sophisticated and elegant.

And I think part of that was because she had a beautiful British accent and I always was impressed by that. But other than that, like she also kind of took care of me like she was always asking me if I was getting home safe or who I was going out with and just checking in on me and had this very big sisterly air there.

Like one thing that haunts me to this day is we found this really cool little vintage shop and she found this sparkly silver dress that she was very excited. She bought because she wanted to wear back home for New Year's Eve. And of course, she never got to wear that dress. And it just haunts me to this day. Like I was right there with her. She was so excited.

And I don't even know what happened to it. You know, like so much of our lives, like in a big way, Two very young women went to Perugia and one of them didn't get to go home and one of them came home completely and utterly changed. And it's a grieving process for me for both of us.

Because I had never been brought to the brink of my own sanity like that before and never again to this day. I was questioned constantly. For hours and hours and hours into the night so that I was sleep deprived. Some of it was just what you would generally call bullying. Someone contradicts you. Someone talks over you. They yell at you. I got slapped.

Like there was general just like abuse and overpowering that was happening.

I did not speak fluent Italian, no. I was very elementary level. I certainly could not defend myself under an interrogation. And I think part of the problem... was also that I wasn't sure if they were mad at me or were not understanding me because I was not speaking fluent Italian or because they were, in fact, suspecting me. Like, I could not interpret what was happening to me.

I'd never even been in a situation where I had been in trouble before. Like, I'd never had to sit down with a principal and talk about being in trouble. Like, nothing like that had ever happened to me. So I was very much... In a very new experience after in the immediacy of discovering that my roommate had been murdered. So I was in a state of shock already.

And I'm in a room with authority figures who I'm relying on for my safety and who I'd been raised to trust and obey. And they are yelling at me. They are contradicting me. They're telling me that what I'm saying doesn't make any sense. They're telling me that I'm lying.

But then on top of that, so these are all, you know, these bullying tactics are very effective at getting people to falsely confess. But on top of that, they lied to me. What was the biggest and most egregious lie? The biggest and most egregious lie was that they knew that I was present when the crime occurred. They knew. That's what they told you that—

And that was incredibly destabilizing for me because that was not what I remembered. Like I was at my boyfriend's house the entire night. I kept insisting that can't be true, that can't be true. But they insisted that it was true and they knew for sure. And so the next lie on top of that was that because I was present and that I had witnessed this crime, I had trauma-induced amnesia.

They insisted that my brain didn't remember the truth precisely because I had witnessed the crime and therefore was traumatized. And my brain had been making up an alternate reality that I thought I was remembering staying at my boyfriend's house when in fact I was at my house when the crime occurred. And you believed it. You started to believe that.

I started to believe it because after hours of insisting upon my innocence and that that wasn't true and that I wasn't lying, I started to question myself. Again, I was suggestible in that moment because there's only so long you can argue with authority figures before you, at least for me, I started to question myself. It's classic gaslighting.

After my conviction, I really settled into this idea that this was my world. It was a very small world. It was very contained. It was very controlled. And it was populated by all of these women who believed by comparison to me, were very unlucky. They were abused, they were neglected, they were impoverished. I think I was the only person there who had all of my teeth.

The level of need and poverty that I encountered in that environment stunned me. I did not know that there were people who could not read an analog clock. or that didn't know that the earth was a sphere. And these were the people that were my community. And I was also the famous one. I was the one who was getting constant letters.

So many of these women were just forgotten by everyone, including their own families. And So I looked at them and I thought, God, I am so lucky. And one way, you know, a very important way to survive prison is to be useful because it's an environment where there's a lot of need and not a lot of resources.

And I realized very quickly that I was, especially after a year in prison, and by that time I was fluent in Italian, I was able to function effectively. as a translator. So lots of the women that were imprisoned were not Italian, were not fluent in Italian, had no idea what anyone was telling them. Where were they coming from?

A lot of people from various African nations, also Eastern Europe. But, you know, there was a couple of Chinese women that were in there at one point and I was translating for them by like taking I just happened to have this English to Chinese dictionary because I'm a language nerd there because there were no translators. There were no translators in the prison.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now. Now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now. Now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.

This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.

They fall into the trap of confirmation bias, seeking out evidence that confirms their hunch and ignoring evidence that doesn't. They get tunnel vision. They fool themselves into thinking they're delivering justice when they're creating yet more injustice.

Even when police and prosecutors commit willful misconduct, which is far too common, withholding exculpatory evidence, contaminating witness testimony, even planting evidence, I don't imagine they are cackling like cartoon villains.

Rather, I believe they commit these acts of misconduct because they've convinced themselves that they've got the right suspect and they just need to put them away, even if that means breaking a few rules. But those rules are there for a reason, because when they are broken, the chances of a wrongful conviction goes up immensely and the costs are widespread and devastating.

It's not up to me or any of our team here to determine how these three families have suffered and how that injustice should be rectified. You have Ken Lawson and the Hawaii Innocence Project Legal Avengers committed to that. Our job here as storytellers and advocates is to make noise, educate, raise awareness and give back. None of us should walk away from this series the same way we walked in.

It seems like Hawaii County's goal is to delay Ian and Sean's civil case, which would finally accomplish what they have now spent years trying to prove, factual innocence. And with that, they would receive compensation from the state that they rightfully deserve.

While you've got your earbuds in, while you fold laundry or cook dinner or drive to work as this podcast plays, know that there are tens of thousands of innocent people, perhaps more than 100,000, trapped in prison, wishing they had the opportunity to perform those daily chores. to work for an annoying boss, or to see that ex-lover at a party across the room.

That's what I found myself missing most in prison. The birthdays, the adventures, the joy of family time during the holidays. I missed those too, obviously. But the longer I was inside, the more it was the daily stuff of a regular life, those unremarkable and even awkward moments that I began to yearn for.

And it's not just those innocents locked inside, but their families on the outside, whose lives get consumed fighting to save them. As you've seen throughout the last 10 chapters, Dana Ireland's death impacted so many people. Dana's parents, Louise and John, spent the last years of their lives with the pain of the death of their daughter.

I mean, everything. And her sister, Sandy.

and three men. There's Frank Pauline Jr. and his family, who is still trying to pick up the pieces, like his aunt Lori.

Judge Kubota says during the hearing, quote, these guys were convicted 23 years ago, and they're seeking a determination of actual innocence. And in my view, justice delayed at your behest is justice denied. I'm Amanda Knox, and this is Three. Chapter 10, Justice.

And his sons.

Then you have Sean Schweitzer.

And finally, there's Albert Ian Schweitzer.

Ian's village has rallied around him for the last 30 years.