She is stunning, she is icy, she is too confident. She’s a devil. Actually, she is not. She is pure, she is genuine, she has been manipulated. As she admitted herself, she didn’t know us Italians could be so judgemental. She’s a winged angel.

Seven years have gone since Meredith Kercher’s tragic death. Still, things haven’t changed, Amanda Knox being the most talked about character of the trial. More than Raffaele Sollecito, her former boyfriend and accomplice according to the court of appeal of Perugia. More than Rudy Guede, the Ivory Coast national who was convicted of the murder back in 2008. More than the actual victim, her flatmate Meredith Kercher.

It seems that public opinion wants Amanda Knox. Part of it wants her to be jailed, the other part wants her free.
Truth is, no one knows what to think of Amanda Knox. Nor do the audience, or the jury in Perugia. It is very hard to make up your mind when significant evidence is missing. The impossibility to make sense of the whole thing probably justifies the stream of strong emotions Miss Knox has provoked since her very early appearances on TV.

Amanda Knox is not the first beautiful woman whose name is linked to a crime. Unsolved cases happen all the time. However, this case is peculiar, with three oddities making the facts even more blurred.

One of Kurcher’s final pictures

Firstly, Knox’s behaviour was the strongest proof of her involvement in the crime until now. At first she declared she spent the night of the murder at Sollecito’s flat: “We talked, smoked weed, had sex.”

Then, completely out of the blue, she changed her story and said that she was in the flat with Meredith, but in another room, that she knew Meredith was with someone, and that she wouldn’t have heard any noises.

At this point she accused Patrick Lumumba, the manager of the pub where she worked sometimes. Then Lumumba was released for lack of evidence, and eventually she changed her version of events again. She was now “definitely not in the flat”. She had said so while being forced to “remember” things she never did during exhausting police interrogations, when she barely could explain herself in Italian.

In an interview with Diane Sawyer released nearly a year ago, Amanda declared that her biggest fault in the whole matter was being naive. As an twenty-year-old American girl, little did she know her behaviour could be misinterpreted by Italian public opinion. Too much smiling, too much happiness, and the shirt she decided to wear during one of the first hearings-the one that read “All you need is love”- was definitely a bad idea.

No doubt that Amanda’s behaviour felt quirky and somewhat suspicious from the very beginning. While her good mood and dress code did not prove her guilty, the lack of consistency in her declarations made her the #1 suspected.

It is fair to wonder: is she hiding something she hasn’t told so far? Or it was just her egocentricity and need to show off to make her confess like a mythomaniac?

The second oddity regards Raffaele Sollecito, Daniel Radcliffe/Harry Potter’s lookalike. Even though the couple had been dating for just nine days at the time of the murder, Sollecito and Knox have always played like a team. They have never accused each other; their romance ended but they have stayed good friends.

Raffaele Sollecito testifying in court

Well, doubts about Mr Sollecito are legitimate if you think of the way he has changed his own version of the facts accordingly to Knox’s. During an interview released to BBC’s Hard Talk, Sollecito (whose style over the years has switched from Harry Potter’s to Tony Manero’s) declared he happened to be confused.

“I had been questioned so many times, police kept asking me where I was on that day. Eventually, I got confused about what day they actually meant.” he explained in the interview.

The last oddity is Rudy Guede, the man whose biological traces were found all over the crime scene: on Meredith’s body, in Meredith’s toilet (apparently he dismissed flushing, that is how he got caught), on the blood on the floor, where he left his footprints, and on the wall, where he left his hand print.

Originally sentenced to 30 years in prison, then reduced to 16 due to the fact he confessed. He declared that he was actually with Meredith on that night, and that they had just had consensual sex when he felt the urge to run to the toilet after eating a bad quality kebab. Eventually he heard Meredith screaming, and tried to rescue her, but he was soon taken back by an unidentified man and woman, whom he admits may be Sollecito and Knox. After being threatened by them, he left the flat and went clubbing.

Evidently, Guede knows more than he has admitted in court. While he has not accused Sollecito and Knox directly, nor they him, somehow their free versions match (around the time they got Lumumba involved the two were talking of a black man who broke in to the flat).

Guede’s statement continues to be misleading

The thing is, Guede was definitely present when poor Meredith was stabbed. Maybe he has not committed murder, but he must have seen something. It is not clear why the only person who has leaked forensic evidence onto the crime scene has not given more complete details, mainly in order to attempt to set himself free.

In Guede’s case, it is most likely that more interesting elements could be investigated. However, since the beginning, the main focus was pinning Amanda Knox on the wall, either as an evil woman or as a loving daughter.

Now that she is guilty again, as a result of the second appeal trial in Perugia, she declared she would fight until the very end. In order to do so, “She will need help”, as she timidly confessed during her interview at “Good morning America.”

Hearing those words, the journalist nodded sympathetically.
Really, this case is all about her.