The Italian prosecutor who put Amanda Knox behind bars for her roommate’s murder has recounted how the pair formed an unexpected bond after she was acquitted of the crime.
Giuliano Mignini spearheaded the case against Knox, who was only 20 when she was accused of helping her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito kill her study abroad housemate Meredith Kercher on Nov. 1, 2007 in Perugia.
She subsequently spent 4 years behind bars before her initial conviction was overturned on appeal in 2011– only to be tried again in absentia a few years later. Both she and Sollecito were finally exonerated in 2015.
Mignini, who is now retired, spoke to The Telegraph this week to mark 15 years since the vicious crime that made global headlines.
While he still believes that Knox was at the scene of the murder, he admitted that she “has changed a lot and I think I can say that I know her.”
Knox and Mignini first started corresponding two years ago, when Knox, now 35, sent the retired lawyer a note through a priest she knew from her time in prison.
The pair went on to exchange holiday cards and family pictures, and finally met in-person at a secret reunion in June.
Mignini told the outlet how delighted he was to meet Knox’s infant daughter, Eureka Muse, and her husband Christopher Robinson.
“Now she has a family and a lovely baby girl named Eureka and is taking part in a worthwhile project regarding justice in the US,” he said. “We have different ideas about the trial that involved us, but now I have a good opinion of her.”
Meanwhile, Mignini is still actively lobbying for justice for Kercher. Fingerprints at the initial crime scene were later identified as belonging to Ivory Coast-native Rudy Guede, who was ultimately convicted of the murder separately from Knox and Sollecito.
Guede was released in 2021, having served 13 years of his 16-year sentence.
“You ask me if there was justice for Meredith, and painfully, I have to answer no, she did not get justice,” Mignini told The Telegraph. He is currently working on plans to have a street in Perugia named after Kercher.
“I hope that the street [Via Della Pergola] will be dedicated to Meredith,” he said. “There is already a plaque in her honor, but it is the minimum Perugia can do to remember this girl from London who met her death in my city.”
Mignini’s comments came shortly after news broke that Knox and Sollecito had also reunited in Italy to go on the date they planned for the day Kercher’s body was found. Sollecito, now a software engineer in Milan, met Knox’s daughter and husband and spent time catching up away from the spotlight of their ordeal.
“It was bittersweet to go back as we were supposed to go there in such different circumstances, but it was just nice for us to be able to talk about something that wasn’t the case,” he told the Mirror of the rendezvous.
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