EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,500 words- 0:00 – 2:44
Aliens, abductees, and why “reading people” isn’t evidence
- NANarrator
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Yeah, so we started off this conversation talking about aliens, because it's, uh-
- AKAmanda Knox
Because they're everywhere.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're everywhere. This is Travis Walton. This is the guy who's got one of the more interesting cases. He, uh, was abducted, allegedly, in Arizona when he was working as a logger.
- AKAmanda Knox
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
And there's a bunch of witnesses that saw the craft, and he disappeared for several days and then came back and has this crazy story.
- AKAmanda Knox
Okay. Any anal probing?
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think he had any anal probing. They, they supposedly, um, worked on him because he, he tried to approach the craft, allegedly, in his story.
- AKAmanda Knox
Okay, so this is like an E.T. scenario-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
... the craft is on the ground.
- JRJoe Rogan
The craft was either on the ground or hovering above the ground, I forget which, and he, he and these other loggers saw it, and he decided to run towards it. And he ran towards it and got hit with some kind of energy. The guys freaked out, the guys that he had been with freaked out and took off, drove away, and as they were driving away, they drove, like, I forget how far, and then they're like, "Fuck, we gotta go back. We gotta go... But this is crazy, what happened?" They go back and he's gone and they can't find him.
- AKAmanda Knox
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's some evidence that the ship was there, that there was some sort of a disturbance on the ground, but Travis is gone. He disappeared for a few days and then came back and with this fantastic story.
- AKAmanda Knox
And define worked on him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, exactly.
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know, you know, like maybe, I guess, whatever energy was coming off the craft damaged him physically, so they did some sort of biological-
- AKAmanda Knox
Like radiation?
- JRJoe Rogan
... repair on him, whatever it was, whether it's radiation or some sort of propulsion system that they had that had some sort of energy that comes off of it, electricity, magnetics, whatever. I don't know what it was.
- AKAmanda Knox
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know if it's real. You know, it's hard, it's hard when people just tell you stories.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He didn't seem like a liar. He seemed like a very credible man that had an extraordinary experience many decades ago, but maybe he's full of shit. You know, there, therein lies the Amanda Knox case.
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Right?
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, no one knows the truth. When you're dealing with, uh, any story where people are trying to piece together a story, it's, it's very complex, and people like to pretend that they can read people.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yes. (clears throat)
- 2:44 – 5:28
Joe’s real-world lesson: being fooled by a convincing liar
- JRJoe Rogan
I used to think I was pretty good at spotting bullshitters until I met a guy who, uh, wound up becoming a murderer and was f- completely full of shit. Like, absolutely 100% full of shit. He was a fake black belt, um-
- AKAmanda Knox
Wait, so, like, he, like, came and sat across from you and was like, "Hey-"
- JRJoe Rogan
No, no, it wasn't that simple.
- AKAmanda Knox
Oh, okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
The... I was introduced to him through friends. That's why I accepted him. Um, and he was a guy who pretended to be a black belt in jujitsu, had made his way all the way into, like, these very close circles of elite fighters, and he was even doing, uh, reporting work. He was working as a journalist for one of the online, uh, mixed martial arts websites.
- AKAmanda Knox
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so I kind of accepted that this guy was legit. Then he did some training with a friend of mine who is legit, and he... my friend was puzzled. He's like, "Dude, I don't know what is going on but he's fucking terrible." He's like, "He's not a black belt." I go, "Really?" He goes, "Sure he wasn't, like, going light?" He's like, "No. No, he didn't know what the fuck he was doing." Like, he was a... he was like a w- white belt. It's like, it's not even like a purple belt, like w- there, there's like progression.
- AKAmanda Knox
He's just faking it till he makes it. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Completely faking it, but faking it to the point where he got on the mats with someone who was legit. And then there's... You know, jujitsu is like, it's like a language in that if someone pretends they speak English, "Oh, yeah, I speak fluent English," and then they come to talk to you like, "What in the fuck is happening?"
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah, sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you're like, "Hey, man, that guy can't talk English." And you'd be like, "Wow, he told me he could."
- AKAmanda Knox
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting. Like, it's like that.
- AKAmanda Knox
I... get that.
- JRJoe Rogan
So if someone like yourself who speaks fluent English was talking to someone who could barely get by, it would be very obvious.
- AKAmanda Knox
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's how it is with jujitsu.
- AKAmanda Knox
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
So my friend comes to me and he goes like, "Something's wrong, man. Like, this guy's... L- like, it's completely fucked up. Like, he's not good at all." And so we're like, "Hmm." And this is, by the way, a period of time in my life where I smoked more pot than I've ever had.
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
So it was like every day I was high.
- AKAmanda Knox
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
So we're like, "Wow, why would anybody fake that? That's so weird. Like, th- he's gonna get caught." Um, so then he lied about a bunch of other things, got ostracized, and then, uh, wound up getting arrested for murder because he was dating this woman who was married and he wound up killing the guy, and he was driving the guy's car around and... (slaps table)
- AKAmanda Knox
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
So, like, taking over his life kind of thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
Not just taking over his marriage, but taking over his life.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think he was just driving the car around for a day.
- AKAmanda Knox
Okay.
- 5:28 – 6:54
Wrongful convictions and the “gut feeling” trap in policing
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah, I think that's the, um, the trouble with law enforcement also-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- AKAmanda Knox
... is they tend to feel like they go... they even go through trainings where they're trained to read people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AKAmanda Knox
... um, using the read technique, and they, um, come away with a false idea of being able to understand people's cues. And of course there's also the, the problem of, like, cultural differences and cultural cues that came into play in my own case, for instance. But, like, just in general across the board, there is a tremendous amount of, um-... just the whole, like, wrongful conviction process kick-starts from-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
... that, from the get-go, from a detective or a police officer getting a vibe and then following through on that gut feeling, regardless of what evidence presents itself.
- JRJoe Rogan
I work with, um, w- m- I have a good friend, Josh Dubin, and, uh, him and a guy named Jason Flom had come on before, and they work with The Innocence Project.
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I, uh, have started doing some stuff with Josh, and he's coming on again soon, and we're going over very specific cases.
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I've actually sent him some cases where people reached out to me and friends that I know. There's a lot of that out there.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a lot of wrongful convictions. There's a lot of, like, really obvious shit police work-
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... corrupt cops, corrupt prosecutors who just want to get a, a number on their ledger-
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... just to want to get a score up on the board. It's a- it's scary.
- 6:54 – 10:18
Prosecutors, incentives, and why ‘good people’ still do harm
- AKAmanda Knox
It is scary, and it's, it's scary also because I, I tend to look at it like this is... It's not like there's just some grand conspiracy, right? Like, it's not like there, there's an evil cabal of prosecutors who are getting behind closed doors and evilly cla- cackling about how they're going to wrongfully convict innocent people. I think the more interesting fact is that they live in this sort of, uh, echo chamber of, like, "We're the good guys going after the bad guys, and so we can't do wrong."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AKAmanda Knox
And w- they get into this cognitive bias space where their instincts are the right instincts. They have better instincts than anyone else.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AKAmanda Knox
And even if the evidence doesn't follow through and confirm their, their, you know, their initial suspicions, they know what the truth is. And so even when DNA evidence comes back, "Well, maybe she had sex with someone else that night, but an- but this guy's the real rapist, and we just didn't happen to get his DNA." Like, that's the kind-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AKAmanda Knox
... of, like, mental gymnastics that you see people going through, and you don't need to be an evil person. That's the interesting thing. You don't need to be a bad person to do those kinds of mental gymnastics because we all do that all the time. And if anything, the way that our criminal justice system works incentivizes prosecutors to do those mental gymnastics because they don't get props when they're wrong. They don't... They... No one congratulates them for overturning a wrongful conviction that they've done. Instead, they get penalized, and, you know, at... Now, like, it... And not to say that they shouldn't be because accountability is important, and if you are blatantly going out of your way to suppress exonerating evidence and, you know, suppressing the ability to check DNA, like, there's all of that going on. But they're coming from a place of, "Well, we have limited resources in the criminal justice system, so I don't want to waste time looking at DNA from an old case that was, like, put away a long time ago when I'm dealing with this million murders right now." So, I mean, there's like, all of these interesting complicating factors that aren't just this prosecutor happens to be evil, and I think that's the more interesting problem because if... Um, you know, in the innocence community, I... One of the reasons why I really like The Innocence Project is it's very practical. It's like, "Look, we have DNA. Doesn't cost us that much to, like, check DNA to prove who it was who actually did this crime. Let's just do it, because if anything, we've proven that these mistakes do happen." Human beings make mistakes all the time, but they're also reaching out across the table to, like, try to recognize the humanity of the people who are actually committing these terrible injustices and trying to, like, have a conversation where everyone wins, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is extremely difficult-
- AKAmanda Knox
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... right? Because you've got to get a person to... They have to abandon their initial bias.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yes, and there is, like, a conservativism bias where you're... The first thing that you thought of is the thing that you really hold onto, and even when new evidence comes in, you are inclined, you're biased towards not totally throwing out your initial impression, but you're just skewing it slightly so that you can keep holding onto that thing so that you don't have to be so wrong.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
Like, the idea that you could be so wrong when you mean well is devastating, and it causes you to go through all of these mental gymnastics to reexamine who you are as a person.
- 10:18 – 13:24
Netflix case reactions: contaminated crime scene and ignored DNA reality
- JRJoe Rogan
I was watching the Netflix documentary-
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and, uh, I watched it two nights ago. It was the first time I'd ever seen it. I knew about your case, um, but I didn't know the specifics. So I watched the documentary, and I watched how assured the Italian prosecutor was, um, when he talked about how the body was covered and that's something that a woman would do.
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
If she murdered someone, she would kill someone. He's acting like, uh, you know, he's, he's a, just a serious, absolutely defined professional. Like, that's what he is. But then I see him walking through the crime scene. I see all those people walking around the crime scene, and, and I'm like-
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... "I'm not a cop, okay? I'm not a cop, but I'm a- but I've watched enough cop shows." I'm like, "What the fuck are they doing?"
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, this is crazy. Even when I'm watching the lady kick open the door, and she kicks her foot through the window, and I'm watching, like, you're, you're shattering glass everywhere. You're, you're con- contaminating the scene. You guys have regular shoes on. You don't even have booties on. You don't have those suits that they wear.
- AKAmanda Knox
You're passing around pieces of evidence. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's fucking crazy-
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... that you're looking for DNA when you're spreading DNA.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was wild. And then the fact that they were willing... Now, this is a spoiler alert if you haven't seen the, the Netflix-
- AKAmanda Knox
Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.
- JRJoe Rogan
Spoiler. Them... Rudi... What was his last name?
- AKAmanda Knox
Rudi Guede.
- JRJoe Rogan
That man, that his DNA was all over the room, that he told a story that he went to the bathroom and came out and witnessed a man cutting-... throat.
- AKAmanda Knox
Well, like, i- interestingly-
- JRJoe Rogan
Meredith, right? That's her name?
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. Yeah. Meredith was my roommate, and his story is that he and Meredith were hooking up. Never hooked up before. Like, never. They were hooking up. He went to the bathroom, he came out, and she was already dead, and he watched two people run away.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's the dumbest story I've ever heard in my life. But it's not just bad. It's like, it's criminally bad. And the story was also that he had met her, and they had hooked up before, right?
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. I, I mean, like, I'm trying to remember all of... 'Cause he's changed his story many, many times. Um, but I think what he said was that he had met her on Halloween, which was the day before she was murdered, and they had decided that they were going to hook up the next day, which is totally absurd. And then he came over the next day, and they were hooking up, and then he had a stomachache and went to the bathroom for a while, and then when he came out, she was dead.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, he had heard a scream or something?
- AKAmanda Knox
Well, he said that he was listening to headphones, so he didn't hear anything.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The fact that they didn't convict him on that, the, the, just the whole insanity of the story, it only, to me, it only seemed like that was even remotely plausible because they were so determined to convict you.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yes. Um-
- 13:24 – 16:45
Raffaele as collateral: alibi turned co-defendant
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. So, and the only reason they were, like, incentivized to convict Raffaele was because he was my alibi. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah, that, like, and let's talk about, like, Raffaele, 'cause no one, no one ever cared about him. Like, in his own book, he talks about how he was Mr. Nobody. Like, nobody actually cared about him. No one cared if he had a motive or not. No one cared that he only knew me for five days. Like, he's not going to go commit murder for someone that he met five days ago.
- JRJoe Rogan
You never know.
- AKAmanda Knox
Well, okay, maybe. But he- (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
If it was a, you know, really good relationship.
- AKAmanda Knox
I... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It was a great five days.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah, rollercoaster. Um, but e- like, no evidence was implicating him, like he had... Like, he had showed that he was, like, on his computer. Like, there was all of this evidence that he was ab- he was absolu-
- JRJoe Rogan
At home.
- AKAmanda Knox
... like, at home and, and no one cared because they were like, "Well, your, your maniac's alibi and you, you were with her."
- JRJoe Rogan
Did they have the ability to track phones back then, in terms of, like, cellphone data? Did they have the ability to track, like, where your phone was in relationship to a tower?
- AKAmanda Knox
They, they were doing that, but th- where I lived and where Raffaele lived was actually quite close, and so it was possible that, like, w- the towers that we were using were, like, interchangeable, basically.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AKAmanda Knox
So, like, the main thing that really would confirm or not whether or not we were there when this crime was committed was whether or not there's fucking DNA in there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AKAmanda Knox
And, like, the thing that's always bothered me about... And think about motivated reasoning. My prosecutor's like, "Well, you know, she's covered with a blanket. A woman must have been involved." Well, she was also sexually assaulted and stabbed to death. That's usually something that men do when they're... Like, if we're talking about what women do when they're committing murder, the vast majority of the time, it's gonna be something like hitting someone with a car or poisoning. Like, if we're gonna talk about, like, base rate reality, like, what do women do when they're committing murder? The, the telltale signs are not do they cover a body with a blanket.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Right.
- AKAmanda Knox
It's, you know, it's usually the kind, the types of crime, like the type of methodology.
- JRJoe Rogan
But, and even then-
- AKAmanda Knox
But even then-
- JRJoe Rogan
... in a fit of rage, a woman is capable of stabbing someone to death.
- AKAmanda Knox
Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, but the fact that, like, we're looking at it, like, if we're genuinely looking at a crime scene where there's a body, young woman, sexually assaulted, stabbed to death, tons of DNA of one dude-
- JRJoe Rogan
All over the house.
- AKAmanda Knox
All over her body, all over, like, in her bl- his fingerprints in her blood, his footprints in her blood, like, his DNA everywhere. What is the likelihood that three people were involved in that scenario, and that only his DNA was left behind? Like, that's the thing that, like, really bothers me, is my prosecutor having motivated reasoning to not, like, having this bias to not change his perspective about how there were multiple people I had to be involved. He said, "Well, Amanda must have cleaned up her DNA and left Rudi Ghez behind so she could frame him."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hilarious. Imagine you would be that good.
- AKAmanda Knox
It's impossible. Like, I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
... I remember th- um, s- a, a detective friend of mine was like, "You would have to... You should get the Nobel Prize in, like, chemistry if you were capable of doing that," because there's no way. You, you wouldn't, you can't tell where your DNA is. Like, wha- how do you h- yeah.
- 16:45 – 21:20
Italian legal system parallels: scapegoats, immunity, and lack of accountability
- JRJoe Rogan
We talked about the Italian legal system on the podcast recently.
- AKAmanda Knox
You did.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because, yes, uh, an unrelated incident, they, um, convicted geologists for manslaughter-
- AKAmanda Knox
Oh. For the earthquake.
- JRJoe Rogan
... because they hadn't predicted an earthquake.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever heard in my life.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
These poor people had to literally go to court and spend an enormous portion of their life defending themselves, lost, and then had to win on appeal.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is-
- AKAmanda Knox
Scapegoating.
- JRJoe Rogan
... fucking terrifying, because there's no science whatsoever that anyone can predict accurately earthqu- especially not the magnitude of the earthquake.
- AKAmanda Knox
Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's obscene, um, on multiple levels because what you're looking at is someone who's saying, "Okay, a lot of people died. This horrible tragedy happened." And usually when it's a natural disaster, we all agree that, like, sometimes fate fucking sucks. And, like, it's horrible and people die, and yeah, there were probably things that we could have done to prevent that, like having better, like, building structures that would-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AKAmanda Knox
... would, you know, resist earthquakes better, but instead of, like, pointing the finger at l- you know, d- could we better protect ourselves from this kind of natural disaster, we're just going to point at the scientists who are supposed to know when earthquakes are gonna happen and how bad they're going to be. Like, of course not. But there is that impulse to v- to-... especially by authority, to point the finger at someone who has fewer resources and power to defend themselves and say, "I'm just gonna put this on you. You're gonna be the face."
- JRJoe Rogan
The problem is it's so dumb and so arrogant, and the idea that they did not consult with scientists to try to understand how this equipment works, try to understand like what-what's the current state of the understanding of this-the science. Like what, uh, w-what do they do to predict earthquakes? And then they charge these guys with manslaughter, which is astoundingly stupid.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. I didn't actually follow the end of that case. Were they able to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, they won on appeal.
- AKAmanda Knox
Okay. That's, that's great.
- JRJoe Rogan
But they should go back and sue.
- AKAmanda Knox
It was on appeal?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
They had to be-
- JRJoe Rogan
They had to stay-
- AKAmanda Knox
They got convicted first?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, they got convicted, yeah. Uh, that's correct, right, Jamie?
- NANarrator
(sighs) Yeah, uh, I think they were even in jail for like a year or two, even, but they, uh...
- AKAmanda Knox
No shit.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, Italian legal system.
- 21:20 – 22:32
The prosecutor’s fantasy narrative: satanic ritual, sexual panic, and ‘Foxy Knoxy’
- AKAmanda Knox
Yes, so they say that... The, the scenario that my, my prosecutor painted, and he painted a few different scenarios because he couldn't really, like, his imagination was going wild, and there wasn't a lot of actual... (laughs) Obviously, there wasn't any evidence to support any of them, but he kept thinking, "Okay, it's n- it's near... It's the day after Halloween, so maybe it's a satanic sex ru-ritual. We know that there's some kind of sex thing involved. We know that Amanda is, like..." Well, we know. "We know that Amanda has sex with people, so she's probably a sexually obsessed person, and Meredith looked down on her for being a sexually obsessed person." So what is likely to have happened in his brain is that, "I was hanging out with Raffaele and Rudy. Meredith comes home. She starts scolding me for my bad morals, and then I'm like, 'You know what, bitch? We're gonna rape you and kill you.'" That's, that's his scenario. And it's, (sighs) it's so unfortunate on so many levels because it's... I mean, it says more about him than it says about anyone else-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AKAmanda Knox
... that he would imagine that that's just how people react to each other, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Th-this was not his initial idea, though, right? Was this his initial idea?
- 22:32 – 28:41
Interrogation and false confession mechanics: 53 hours, language barriers, and coercion
- AKAmanda Knox
I mean, his initial idea (sighs) was that I was involved somehow. He didn't know how, but he thought that I was involved somehow, I knew something, I was covering up for someone, and that's why he interrogated me for 53 hours over five days. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is really scary that they can do that, right? It's like you can get someone to say a lot of things if you can get alone with them in a room, scare the fuck out of them, and th- and just torture them, like, essentially.
- AKAmanda Knox
Well, I'm glad you, you know that because, like, a lot of people don't know that.
- JRJoe Rogan
You can get people to crack.
- AKAmanda Knox
Oh, absolutely, like, that's, (sighs) it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
People crack when they get pulled over by the cops for speeding.
- AKAmanda Knox
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
People crack for all kinds of things.
- AKAmanda Knox
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They crack if they have a joint in their s-glove box.
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
People crack.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, when, when authority is scaring you-
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and coming down on you, and, in your case, they actually hit you a couple times. There-there's... And you're 20.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? Like, you-
- AKAmanda Knox
I was 20.
- JRJoe Rogan
Your brain isn't even fully formed.
- AKAmanda Knox
My brain isn't fully formed. My friend had just been murdered. I was alone in a foreign country, and people were... People who I was entrusting my life and safety to were screaming at me that I was wrong, that I was never gonna see my family again, that I was super traumatized, that I had ex- I had seen something so horrible that I must have just completely blocked it out, and here's... And, (laughs) and here's a scenario that would explain that. "Look, you have a text message from your boss, Patrick Lumumba. You must have met him that night. You must have seen him murder Meredith. Just admit it. Just admit it. Remember, remember, remember." Like, they kept telling me, like, the, the gross thing about it was they kept telling me to remember. They didn't even tell me to, like, admit it. They were telling me that I just couldn't remember it, and I had to remember, or else I was never gonna see my family again.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus. So were you thinking...... you just had to tell them whatever they wanted to hear just so you could get out of there?
- AKAmanda Knox
Honestly, I started to question my own sanity. I started to believe them that I must have witnessed something horrible or, and I just couldn't remember it, and that's the only explanation for why they would treat me that way.
- JRJoe Rogan
How long did that take before you think you started questioning your sanity?
- AKAmanda Knox
Um, (sighs) so I was, you know, a few hours into that final interrogation, that was in the middle of the night. I was not prepared to be interrogated at all because honestly they didn't even call me in that night; they called my boyfriend, Raphael. Um, but I was staying with him and I was afraid to be alone at home 'cause a murderer was on the loose. And so, I went with him and I was waiting in the, um, in the lobby, like by the elevator, waiting for him to come out from questioning and then they brought me in, um, and just went on and on and on. Um, and so I cracked eventually. So the thing that cracked me too was they brought in an interpreter, right? Someone who f- actually spoke English, because for a long time I was just talking to people in Italian and I was worried that I couldn't... I wasn't even comprehensible. I thought that the reason why they were yelling at me was because I was doing something wrong, like I just wasn't explaining myself correctly. And then I-
- JRJoe Rogan
How, how fluid were you, fluent were you at the time?
- AKAmanda Knox
I mean, I had been there for like five weeks, so I was-
- JRJoe Rogan
And you took Italian before?
- AKAmanda Knox
I had taken Italian for a year before, so I, I was about as fluent as... I'd like to say I had about the fluency of a 10-year-old, but I think that that's even generous because I could speak in certain tenses; my vocabulary was totally limited though. So there were limited things that I actually had the words to say.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- 28:41 – 1:03:03
Discovering the murder and then becoming the story: media sensationalism and identity theft
- JRJoe Rogan
The moment you found out that she had been murdered, what was that like?
- AKAmanda Knox
Um... (sighs) It's confusing because I knew that something was wrong as soon as I found... Well, I came home and I found that there was a window broken into and Meredith wasn't answering her phone. But I didn't understand what was wrong. I didn't, I didn't know and when the police came in and broke down her door and everyone started screaming, I didn't see into her room. I never actually saw her body, and so I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know if that was Meredith in the room. In fact, I remember at... The first thing that Philomena, one of my roommates, started yelling was, "A foot! A foot!" And I was like, "Oh my God, is there, like, a severed foot in Meredith's room? Like, I don't know what's going on." She's... Philomena is hysterical and I don't know what's going on. Everyone's yelling in Italian, speaking really quickly. I don't understand. So I actually was relying on Raphael to translate for me, like, "What is going on?" He was like, "I don't know. Let me, let me figure it out." And we were all, like, shoved out of the house and finally someone is like, "It's Meredith! It's Meredith and she's dead." And I was like, "Oh my God." Like, it was outside of the house that someone was telling me she's... Her body was in there, and someone told me that there was all this blood. Um, I remember not actually knowing, like, how she had died until I went to the police office and I asked. I was, like, being questioned and one of the police officers was like... (making a choking sound) And so, like, I sort of learned over the course of that day these, the, the details of it, but I didn't fully understand, like, what had really happened. Like, as far as I knew, you know, she, she... Some-I mean, it was clear that there was a break-in. Like, the window had been broken into, one of, uh, it was Filomena's room. All of her stuff was all over the place. It wasn't clear to me what had happened though, and it wasn't on- until over the course of that whole day and piecing together what I was hearing that I understood the gravity of the situation, that she had been sexually assaulted, that she had been stabbed to death, that it was a struggle. Um, it was all, it was all like... I remember the first thought, and it's a guilty thought that I had, um, I remember thinking, "Thank God I wasn't home." Um, because that could have been me. And a part of me, like over time, felt really guilty about that thought because I thought, maybe if I was home and there had been two of us, maybe the outcome would have been different. Maybe we would have been able to fend him off together. But here's, you know, an athletic guy wielding a knife, I'm not sure that we would have. And maybe I would have been dead too. So it's kind of a thought that comes back to mind a lot when I think about this, um, and how fortuitous it was, um, that I just happened to be in this, like, brand new romance and hanging out with my new boyfriend all the time, every waking moment that I could. And that's what happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's hard for me to imagine the jolt of a 20-year-old life where you are overseas, going to school, involved in this new romantic relationship, and then out of nowhere-
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... boom, you're a suspect in a murder.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. Well, and what's interesting is I didn't know, like I didn't know that I was a suspect. It's like the boom for me was someone close to me just died, and that could have been me. And now what?
- JRJoe Rogan
And then it was all those things that piled on, they get piling on.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. And then, you know, I'm in jail. I'm thinking "Oh my God, this is all just a horrible misunderstanding." Like, the, uh, I'm sure they're going to figure it out sometime (laughs) . Um, I remember, like, the first two years of my imprisonment, I was convinced that, like, it was all just a big misunderstanding and somebody would figure it out. And I was convinced, I was, I was convinced that there was no possible way that people could actually believe that I was involved. Like, the, even just, not because, uh, it's me, but because there wasn't any evidence there. Like, it was so patently obvious to me that, like, this, this idea of me, this Foxy Knoxy character that was being constructed in the courtroom, this Luciferina, like this idea of a person was obviously made up. It was so obvious to me. And yet... and, and yet.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it seemed like the Italian media just ran with it though.
- AKAmanda Knox
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that was one of the, the big sort of regrets that my, especially my family had, was at the very beginning, um, they were advised to not speak to the media at all, because they were just going to make a field day of it. There was... you know, in the same way that there was never going to... once I was accused, there was never gonna be anything that I could do to prove my innocence (laughs) in the eyes of people. Um, my lawyers were also worried that there was nothing my family could say but that would not be twisted and, and turned into something that would just fuel, further fuel the scandal mongering. And what that meant was there was a void. There was a void in which who I was, my very identity, could be reconstruct or constructed out of total fantasy that was the only thing that was, that... the only reason why it was being constructed was to further this scandal and to sell more papers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AKAmanda Knox
Like, that, that was the reason why the... it wasn't the public interest of the story that kept The Sun, in, in Britain, reporting on this case. Like, they were, they were reporting, like, reporting on whether or not I ate pizza, like (laughs) the days leading up to my arrest. Like that-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's just selling papers.
- AKAmanda Knox
It's just selling papers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is, uh, do they have... I'm not that familiar with the Italian news media, but do they have, like, sort of a tabloid nature to the way they do the news?
- AKAmanda Knox
Well, paparazzo is an Italian word.
- JRJoe Rogan
Those motherfuckers.
- AKAmanda Knox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AKAmanda Knox
And yeah, I mean, the same way that Great Britain ha- also has a really sketchy tabloid culture. There is a, um, sensationalist bent to it that's very much a result of, like, the Berlusconi era of, um, of news. So I don't know if you're very familiar with Berlusconi and how his, like, legacy shaped the way media-
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I'm not.
- AKAmanda Knox
... works. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's, um, he's kind of like the Donald Trump of Italy, where he starts out as this m- media personality who is really, really known for just, um, like having that sort of reality show, uh, strippers in every show kind of, um, vibe, where he's just giving the people what they want and, um, you know, outrage culture. And then he turned that into a political career and then ran the country for a ridiculous... How long? Do you... (laughs) like some ridiculously long time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like 10 years, more?
- AKAmanda Knox
More. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Really? (laughs)
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's probably what Trump wanted too, I think.
- AKAmanda Knox
Is he trying again? Do you think?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah?
- 1:03:03 – 1:21:19
Appeals whiplash, no compensation, and the real killer fading from view
- JRJoe Rogan
When did it get resolved? How old were you when it got resolved?
- AKAmanda Knox
So totally? Like-
- JRJoe Rogan
That was the Supreme Court, the, the appeal, you win on the appeal, and then they take it again to the Supreme Court, and then you win there.
- AKAmanda Knox
Mm-hmm. So, yeah, no, it's even more horrible than that because it's... I get convicted, I get acquitted on appeal.
- JRJoe Rogan
How many years were you in jail before you got acquitted?
- AKAmanda Knox
I was in jail for four years.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whew.
- AKAmanda Knox
Yeah. Um, yeah. (laughs) That's a, just a whole thing. Um, then I was, um... It was brought up to the Italian Supreme Court, they overturned my acquittal, sent it back to the appellate court to try me again, they found me guilty again. Then it went back to the Italian Supreme Court, and they overturned that and definitively acquitted me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- AKAmanda Knox
So it was an eight-year-long process. Um, which, to be frank, is actually lucky in terms of the worlds of wrongful convictions. Usually, th- the average amount of time it takes to overturn a wrongful conviction in this country is 14 years. So I came away relatively unscathed in comparison.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but then all of a sudden, you're almost 30 and your life has been a mess and you've been in jail for something you didn't do.
- AKAmanda Knox
And it's not like I get my life back. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, and not like you even get money.
- AKAmanda Knox
No, no. I've-
- JRJoe Rogan
They don't say like, "Hey, we fucked up. Here's 10 million bucks."
- AKAmanda Knox
No. No, and meanwhile-
- JRJoe Rogan
"Here's a pizza."
- AKAmanda Knox
... the only thing that anyone has ever heard of me about is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that.
- AKAmanda Knox
... in relation to a murder that I didn't even commit.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ugh.
- AKAmanda Knox
So like, the horrible, frustrating, like, part of this is not only is the actual victim overlooked because everyone's talking about me, and I have nothing to do with her murder. Meanwhile, the actual murderer is quietly sort of forgotten, tucked away. He's now free. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's free?
- AKAmanda Knox
Oh, yes. So he got out, um, in November of 2020 after serving 13 years in prison. Um, so he's out. He's free.
- JRJoe Rogan
Holy shit.
- AKAmanda Knox
Um, and no one thinks of him when (laughs) they think of Meredith's murder. They... A lot of people have never even heard of him. A lot of people ask me, "Who do you think really did it?" And that is because (laughs) the prosecution and the media all defined this case by... With my face and my name.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it was sensational?
- AKAmanda Knox
Because-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it sold newspapers?
- AKAmanda Knox
It sold s- it sold newspapers, and it was also the first thing that the detectives and prosecution fixated on.
Episode duration: 3:11:56
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Transcript of episode rjcWON18_i8
