HotmailAmanda Knox’s father is confident she’ll go free
He says ‘the state has nothing’ to prove his daughter killed her roommate
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Dad: Amanda Knox ‘anxious to testify’ April 24: While American student Amanda Knox remains on trial in Italy for the murder of her British roommate, TODAY’s Meredith Vieira talks to Amanda’s father, Curt Knox, about the trial and how Amanda is doing. Today show |
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The father of a young American woman on trial in Italy for the grisly slaying of her roommate said that the deeper the prosecution gets into its case, the more certain he is that his daughter will be proved innocent.
“Frankly, as the trial unfolds, I’m getting more and more confident, because as we get into the forensic evidence, the state has nothing,” Curt Knox told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Friday from Perugia, Italy, where he had just visited his daughter, Amanda Knox, in jail.
Sex game gone awry?
Knox, a 21-year-old from Seattle, was in an exchange program in Perugia and sharing an apartment with Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Leeds University in England, when the Briton was found stabbed to death in the house on Nov. 2, 2007. Prosecutors allege Kercher was killed during what began as a sex game.
Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, are charged together in the death. A third person was also charged: Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast. In a separate trial last year, Guede was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Knox has been imprisoned since the killing, and has been portrayed in the Italian press as a sex-obsessed party girl who has not shown the proper grief to be expected from someone whose friend and roommate was brutally murdered with a kitchen knife.
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Although the trial has been going on since January and is expected to continue into the summer, the prosecution has yet to present any direct evidence linking Knox and Sollecito to the murder, NBC News’ Keith Miller reported from Perugia. But, he said, “Prosecutors could be holding the best evidence for last.”
Eager to testify
Curt Knox said that when he visits his daughter, they don’t talk about the trial. Instead, he keeps her up to date on her family and what’s happening in her hometown of Seattle.
“She’s hanging in there,” the father, who has been at every court session during the long trial, told Vieira. “She’s seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and is actually getting anxious to testify and get her word in court that she’s 100 percent innocent.”
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“I personally have actually seen the crime scene video a number of times, and it’s difficult to look at,” Curt Knox said.
The killing took place in a tiny bedroom in the tile-roofed home Amanda Knox shared with Kercher. Recently, the court and jury visited the house, which has remained vacant and has been invaded and vandalized in the 18 months since the murder. Amanda Knox has said she spent the night at her boyfriend's house.
A ‘good kid’
Curt Knox said the visit allowed the jury to see how small the room was and how difficult it would be for three people to have committed the murder together without any DNA from two of them being left behind. He has said repeatedly that he’s convinced that Guede was Kercher’s sole killer.
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“Absolutely not,” he said. “How she’s being portrayed is 180 degrees different than how she truly is. She is an extremely good kid.”
Vieira asked Curt Knox how he and his family are holding up during their long ordeal.
“It’s devastating for anybody involved in a family. It’s not just me,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to support her, and we’re going to bring her home.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.
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