Amanda Knox Wants To Return To Murder Scene In Italy

Ten years after British student Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered in Perugia, Italy, her American roommate, Amanda Knox, wants to go back to the scene of the crime. Knox, now 30, spent four years in an Italian prison after she was wrongfully accused of murdering Kercher.

Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were both convicted twice in an Italian court. Now, the only way for her to fully get closure, she said, was to head back to Italy.

"The only way that I'm going to come full circle is by physically, literally, coming full circle," Knox told People magazine this week. "I know that Perugia is probably the least welcome place for me in the entire world. And that's scary, but it also means a lot to me, not to be afraid of a place and see Perugia through my family's eyes."

Knox was finally exonerated by the Italian Supreme Court in 2015. Since then, she's been living in Seattle with her boyfriend, working as a writer and activist for those who have been wrongfully accused.

"A decade has passed. I've processed a lot in the meantime," she told People. "But this feels like the next step of the process. I'm no longer the bright-eyed girl who shows up with the best of intentions. I'm coming in fully aware of the context of what it's going to be like, but I look forward to it."

Knox explained that she wanted to go back, in part, because of the relationship she had with the priest at the prison and the relationships her family forged during their time in Perugia.

"I want to go back and inhabit a space, in a way, that I'm not being consumed by it, that I'm just kind of being a person in a place again," she said. "So that can be my last memory of Perugia, and not being raced out of a courtroom and fleeing from paparazzi in a car after all of those years of incredible suffering."

The prison priest Knox referred to, Father Saulo Scarabattoli, said the town would have no problem welcoming Knox and her family back.

"They kept to themselves, they were humble," Scarabattoli told The Daily Beast. "The community accepted them and would welcome them back. They would be like old friends."

The prosecutor in the case, however, said that while he wasn't shocked by Knox's wish to return, he hoped it wouldn't be to commemorate the actual day of Kercher's death.

"That would send the wrong message," Guiliano Mignini told The Daily Beast.

Knox's desire to go back to Italy is a reversal from what she has told reporters in the past. The notorious exoneree told "Good Morning America" in 2014 that she would never set foot on Italian soil of her own volition.

"I will never go willingly back to the place where I'm going to fight this to the very end," she said at the time. "It's not right, and it's not fair."