'This Is Who I Really Am'

SEVENTEEN YEARS AFTER BEING FALSELY ACCUSED OF MURDER AND IMPRISONED IN ITALY, SHE'S FOUND NEW PURPOSE AND FORGIVENESS -

- GILLIAN TELLING

In 2011, when Amanda Knox was acquitted of the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher after four years in an Italian prison cell, she wanted nothing more than to return to her previous life in Seattle as just another anonymous college student. She quickly discovered that would never happen. "Not just because of paparazzi stalking me or my receiving endless death threats," says Knox, now 37.

"But I had changed. I was now the girl accused of murder. For better or for worse, that was forever my legacy." Now, in Free: My Search for Meaning (out March 25), Knox tells the story of life after she got out of prison following a desperate fight to prove her innocence of the horrifying crime. On Nov. 2, 2007, Kercher, a British 21-yearold who, like 20-year-old Knox, was studying abroad in Perugia, was found sexually assaulted with her throat slit at their shared apartment. Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of murder in a sensational trial, with prosecutors alleging a sex game gone wrong.

Then their convictions were overturned in appeals court in 2011, with DNA evidence identifying a drifter named Rudy Guede as the killer.

Knox was officially exonerated in 2015, though she remains convicted of slander for falsely implicating bar owner Patrick Lumumba in a statement to police she said was made under duress.

In the book, Knox doesn't rehash what happened the night of the crime. Instead she focuses on life in prison and what happened after she was released.