Amanda Knox's TV Interview With Diane Sawyer: Retrial "Incredibly Painful"

In an sit-down with ABC News, Knox talks about what it feels like knowing she still has murder charges pending against her in Italy despite her initial acquittal

By Josh Grossberg Apr 30, 2013 2:58 PMTags
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Amanda Knox may have her freedom, but her legal nightmare isn't over yet.

In an excerpt of her first-ever TV interview about her ordeal to promote her memoir, the 25-year-old Seattle native opened up to Diane Sawyer about what it was like to be acquitted in the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher for which she served four years in prison only to learn an Italian Supreme Court ruled last month that she must stand trial again.

"It was incredibly painful," Knox told ABC News' Diane Sawyer about the court's decision to annul her acquittal. "I feel like after crawling through a field of barbed wire and finally reaching what I thought was the end, it just turned out that it was the horizon. And I had another field of barbed wire that I had ahead of me to crawl through."

She also said she was shocked at the portrait that was painted of her by the press based on the things she posted online—including headlines like "sexual thrill-seeker," a "She-Devil With an Angel's Face" and a "Sphinx of Perugia."

"I was in the courtroom when they were calling me a devil. It's one thing to be called certain things in the media and another to be sitting in a courtroom fighting for your life while people are calling you a devil," Knox added. "For all intents and purposes, I was a murderer. Whether I was or not. And I had to live with the idea that that would be my life."

No word yet whether Amanda will return to Italy to face the murder charges, though various media observers consider it unlikely.

As for her future, Knox just wants "the truth to come out."

"I'd like to be reconsidered as a person. What happened to me was surreal. But it could've happened to anyone," she said.

Knox's book, Waiting to Be Heard, hits store shelves today.