Freeing 'Foxy Knoxy': Why People Are So Obsessed with Amanda Knox

On November 1, 2007, 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher—"Mez" to her friends—was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered in her bedroom in Perugia, Italy. She'd been in the city just a month, living in an apartment with three others.

The next day, one of Kercher's housemates, 20-year-old American student Amanda Knox, returned to that apartment having spent the night with her new boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. She found Kercher's door locked and assumed she was sleeping. She became alarmed only after she left and came home later to find Kercher's door still locked. Knox and Sollecito alerted the Italian police and forced Kercher's door open, where they found her body on the floor.

International media descended on Perugia to cover what was fast becoming a sensational case. By then, prosecutors had alleged that the murder was "a sex game gone wrong" and that Knox was a sexual sadist. Dubbed "Foxy Knoxy" by Italian and international media, Knox quickly became infamous—and all these years later, she remains the key figure in a crime that captivated the world.

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