Amanda Knox insists ‘I really honour Meredith’s memory’ as she defends memoir

Amanda Knox has defended releasing her latest memoir by saying honouring her murdered flatmate Meredith Kercher’s past “does not mean erasing my own”.

The 37-year-old criticised Ms Kercher’s family’s lawyer who said “the initiatives of Knox continue to be inappropriate and disrespectful”, as she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain (GMB) that he can “very politely keep his opinions to himself”.

Ms Knox said she hoped Ms Kercher’s family would read her second memoir, adding: “I really honour Meredith’s memory.”

Officers discovered the body of British foreign exchange student Ms Kercher in her bedroom in Perugia on November 2 2007.

They said the 21-year-old’s throat had been slashed and she had been sexually assaulted.

Ms Knox and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested and later convicted of murder and sexual assault in 2009.

The couple maintained their innocence and, after years of legal battles, she and Mr Sollecito were acquitted of sexual assault and murder by Italy’s highest court in 2015.

Rudy Hermann Guede was convicted of Ms Kercher’s murder in 2008.

I hope that they read my book because I really honour Meredith’s memory in the book but I also believe that honouring her past and story does not mean erasing my own

Questioned on whether releasing her second memoir would risk looking as if she was capitalising on her own tragedy, Ms Knox told GMB: “Well, I would say that my first book was a very different one to this book.

“I’m very proud of Waiting To Be Heard. It was written at a time when I felt like so many people were authoring my experience and saying what it was and I felt like I needed to set the record straight.

“It was written at a time when I was deeply immersed in the legal saga and in proving my innocence.

“Today, I look at this as an opportunity to share a story of, not erasing the past but really learning from the past so that we can live better lives, personally and as a society.”

Asked about the impact her book could have on Ms Kercher’s family, Ms Knox said: “I hope that they read my book because I really honour Meredith’s memory in the book but I also believe that honouring her past and story does not mean erasing my own.

“I am a person who is continuing to pursue justice in this case but a bigger issue that I try and speak to and free is how do we all overcome the traumas that are in our lives, regardless of whether or not we get what we deserve.”

Ms Knox was also asked to respond to the words of Ms Kercher’s family’s lawyer, Francesco Maresca, who said: “It’s evident that for Knox the Perugia trial continues to be a source of income and a series of opportunities to maintain her name in the media.”

In response, Ms Knox told GMB: “Well, I would say that he’s a hypocrite, honestly, as someone who himself has profited not just off the work that he has done on the case but in writing his own book, I think that Mr Maresca can very politely keep his opinions to himself.

“He has always been very much a man who has never, ever considered my humanity and experience and is subject to something that I like to call single victim fallacy.

“The idea that in a tragic event, there can only be one victim, and that is simply not true so I think, I don’t really care what Mr Maresca thinks, to be frank.”