Disney’s plans to dramatise the case of a woman wrongly convicted for fatally stabbing a 21-year-old exchange student have been slammed for their ‘lack of sensitivity’.
A lawyer representing the family of Meredith Kercher, the Brit who was tragically murdered in Perugia 17 years ago, is just one of the people to hit out at the premise of the eight part series centred around Amanda Knox.
Knox was jailed in 2007 she was found guilty of fatally stabbing Kercher though she was then definitively acquitted of the murder in 2015 due to a lack of evidence – after she had already served four years of her sentence.
Kercher was on exchange from the University of Leeds and shared an apartment in Perugia, Italy, in 2007 with Knox which is where the stabbing was initially said to have taken place.
Now, an eight-part series is being made for Hulu, a subscription streaming service owned by Disney, which tells of Knox’s path to freedom.
Meredith Kercher, from Coulsdon, was killed just three months after moving to Italy for a study abroad programme at Perugia’s prestigious university (pictured: in an undated photo released in November 2007)
Knox and Sollecito, pictured in Italy shortly after the case made headlines in 2007, had only been dating for a short amount of time before Meredith’s death
Knox pictured leaving with penitentiary police after a court hearing in Perugia on September 16, 2008
Filming began last week in Orvieto and will continue from Tuesday until the end of the week in Perugia with the Via della Pergola apartment were Kercher was murdered even being used as a location of choice.
The lawyer for the Kercher family, Francesco Maresca, said: ‘We’ve already spoken about this case too much and at a certain point you have to close the chapter.’
Speaking to The Times, she added: ‘However, Knox does not want to close the chapter.
‘This continuous stirring is a demonstration of a lack of sensitivity. She earns money, obtains visibility on the television after many years … It seems that Knox does not want people to forget about this story and does all she can to keep it alive.’
A statement from Meredith Kercher’s sister, Stephanie, read ‘she will forever hold a lasting legacy in friendship and kindness that no media can change’ and spoke of ‘an indescribable void’.
Meredith’s parents Arline (centre) and John (right) Kercher – who both died in 2020 – and her sister Stephanie (left) at a press conference in Perugia in November 2007
Meredith Kercher (pictured) was tragically murdered in 2007
The real murderer of Kercher was eventually identified as Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, after his DNA was found on her body.
He was sentenced to 16 years before being freed in 2021 as he only needed to serve 13 years due to good behaviour.
However, Knox’s 2011 slander conviction relating to Patrick Lumumba who she accused of killing Kercher would hang over her head for many years.
Knox apologised in June this year to the court and said that she wrongly accused him after being put under intense police pressure for hours, adding she had been ‘scared, tricked and mistreated.’
She said: I am very sorry that I was not strong enough to resist the pressure of police’
But the two judges and six jurors found her guilty of slander.
She had earlier told the judge: ‘I never wanted to slander Patrick; he was my friend.’
Lumumba’s lawyers said the bar owner’s reputation suffered regardless of whether she knew who the murderer was.
Knox initially accused the Congolese owner of a bar, Patrick Lumumba, (pictured outside Perugia’s court, central Italy, Tuesday September 16, 2008) of killing Kercher
‘When Patrick was accused by Amanda, he became known everywhere as the monster of Perugia,’ Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli told reporters saying that the conviction should be upheld. Lumumba was not in court.
Knox is now 37 and has two children. She spends her time advocating for criminal justice reform and campaigning against wrongful convictions.
A 2011 film for US television, the 2013 memoir, Waiting to be Heard, and a 2016 Netflix documentary are just some of the ways she has had her story told already.
Knox was reporterted to have been paid $3.8 million (£2.9 million) for her book deal.
She is now the mother of two small children, and has a podcast with her husband while campaigning against wrongful convictions
The new series, titled Amanda: A Coming of Age Horror Story, is co-produced by Monica Lewinsky who became well-know for having an affair with the then-American president Bill Clinton – a story which Disney also decided to turn into a television drama.
Knox is also executive producer on the new drama. She is being played by Grace Van Patten.
Series bosses say it tells the ‘true story of how Amanda Knox was wrongfully convicted for the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher and her 16-year odyssey to set herself free’.
Lawyer Maresca has made disapproving references to talks Knox gave to American universities in 2018 for which she is reported to have been paid seven and a half thousand pounds for each.
Speaking to The Times, he went so far as to say that her calumny conviction being upheld cast doubt on her complete innocence.
‘Knox’s silence at the moment would have been the most appropriate thing,’ he concluded.
