COEUR d’ALENE — Most people recognize the name Amanda Knox.

They may also recognize her nickname, once plastered on tabloids around the world: “Foxy Knoxy,” something once-innocent that originated on her childhood soccer team.

That nickname was translated in Italian to “wicked fox” during Knox’s four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for the 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher.

It was a heinous crime — and one Knox steadfastly maintained she did not commit.

But to the media, “I was the drug-addled American girl gone wild ... a vicious femme fatale,” Knox said.

During the Coeur d’Alene Regional Chamber’s 5th Annual Women’s Luncheon at The Coeur d’Alene Resort on Wednesday, Knox said she’s found that while most people recognize her name — and nicknames — even over a decade after her exoneration, few have heard of the man who had actually taken Kercher’s life.

Rudy Guede was convicted of the murder of Kercher in 2008. Though Guede’s DNA and other evidence were found throughout the crime scene, the prosecutor’s certainty that Knox was involved did not diminish.

“The prosecution, the police, and the media were focused on me instead,” Knox said. “They said, ‘there’s just something off about this 20-year-old that lived with Meredith.’”

But the story Knox conveyed to the nearly 700 attendees was not entirely one of hardship, but of reclaiming one’s life.

For all the stories that had been told about her, Knox realized that she also had a story in her head about her prosecutor — one that painted the man who convicted her as “her own Boogeyman,” even evil.

She reached out and requested to meet, leading to two years of correspondence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I told him that I wanted to know who he was,” she recalled.

Knox ultimately learned that her prosecutor’s own father was murdered when he was four years old. He saw himself as a protector in his community, she said.

When they eventually met in person, her prosecutor did not apologize.

What he did say, however, was that he would not prosecute the case again if asked. And, that her reaching out was “one of the most life-changing experiences he ever had,” Knox said.

Though she thought she was looking for an apology, Knox had instead found liberation.

“I was no longer at his mercy,” she said. “He had become this fragile thing that was seeking absolution from me without actually asking for it.”

She looks back on that meeting as the first time she was able to define who she was, rather than others doing it for her.

“For the first time, I was not just surviving this bad thing, I was responding to it,” Knox said.

Knox was met with a standing ovation as she concluded her nearly hour-long talk.

“She reminds us that our stories do not define us — we define them,” said CDA Regional Chamber Vice Chair Jennifer Smock.

“Life is not black and white; we can hold pain and purpose equally,” Knox said. “We can move forward (and) stand up for who we really are. That’s what I learned on my journey.” 

    Amanda Knox speaks in front of nearly 700 people for the 5th Annual Women’s Luncheon on Wednesday at The Coeur d'Alene Resort.
  

    Jennifer Smock, right, embraces Amanda Knox after Knox spoke during the 5th Annual Women’s Luncheon on Wednesday.