Amanda Knox reveals she became ‘best friends’ with a prison chaplain in Italy while serving her sentence for murdering Meredith Kercher – and he still writes to her every year on her ‘freedom-versary’

• The former exchange student posted on Twitter on the anniversary of her release
• READ MORE: Amanda Knox announces she is pregnant as her and husband Christopher Robinson expect baby No. 2 – seven years after she was acquitted of killing Meredith Kercher 

Amanda Knox has revealed she still hears from a prison chaplain every year on October 3 – the anniversary of the date her murder conviction was overturned – after he became her ‘best friend’ during her imprisonment in Italy.

The mother-of-one from Seattle, who recently announced she’s expecting her second child with husband Christopher Robinson, paid tribute to her prison pal, named Don Saulo, on Twitter.

Posting exactly 12 years after her conviction for murdering British exchange student Meredith Kercher was overturned in 2011, the campaigner, now 36, recalled how she befriended Don Saulo in Capanne prison. Perugia.

She also revealed her fear ahead of the reversal of her murder conviction as she had convinced herself she’d be in prison for at least another 20 years – but her friend, on the other hand, was sure she would be released.

Describing herself as ‘too afraid to hope’, Knox said she sometimes finds herself back in the ‘limbo space’, suggesting a state of poor mental health – but when she receives a message from Don Saulo, she instantly feels better.

Amanda Knox has revealed on Twitter that she befriended a prison chaplain while she was incarcerated in Capanne Prison in Perugia, who still sends her a message on her ‘freedom-versary’ every year

In a Twitter thread, Knox wrote: ‘Every year on Oct 3rd, Don Saulo, the prison chaplain who became my best friend over those four years, writes me to celebrate my freedom-versary. Twelve years ago today, he sat with me for hours, talking, playing music, waiting…

‘I was too afraid to hope. I was planning for the next 20+ years inside. What I remember most about this day is that limbo space before we knew what would happen, when he was just present with me, with my fear, with my uncertainty. And I love him for that.

‘Meanwhile, he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even hopeful. He was treasuring every second because he knew our time together was short. And he was right; he never saw me in Capanne prison again.

‘Some days I still feel like I’m in that limbo space, fearing the worst, waiting for life to feel right again. And then Don Saulo sends me a message. He’s still right there beside me, just holding my hand.’

Knox, pictured in September 2008 at a court hearing in Perugia, was convicted in 2009 of the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher

Meredith Kercher, an exchange student from the UK, was found murdered in her bed in Perugia in 2007

In 2009 Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were both convicted of killing friend and roommate Meredith Kercher, who was murdered in 2007. They were jailed, but eventually released in 2011 and Amanda was acquitted of the crime  by the Italian Supreme Court in 2015.

A local man, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial after his DNA was found on Kercher’s body and in the room where she died, though questions still linger to this day about what happened on that night in 2007, even from Knox herself.

Knox has since returned home to the US, got married to Robinson, started a podcast with him and welcomed a child together, daughter Eureka Muse Knox Robinson, after having previously miscarried.

The couple, who were married in 2020 in a time travel-themed wedding, kept Eureka’s birth a secret from the press for three months until an October 2021 announcement in the New York Times.

She’d even lied to listeners to her podcast by saying that she was still pregnant in a bid to avoid a media scrum.

In an interview on podcast Call Her Daddy, Knox said she dreads the moment her little girl asks questions about the case.

Raffaele Sollecito (left) was once convicted for the murder. Rudy Guede (right) was convicted in a separate trial after his DNA was found on Kercher’s body

Knox is pictured in June 2019 speaking at the Criminal Justice Festival in Modena, Italy

Knox and Robinson attend the conference of the Criminal Justice Festival at the University of Modena in June 2019

‘I have thought about [the moment I have to tell my daughter] a lot,’ she told host Alex Cooper. ‘The moment I’m not looking forward to the most is the moment when she first says, “That’s not fair.”‘

Amanda believes that telling her daughter about the case will spark a ‘deep’ understanding about ‘human suffering’ and quickly make her realize that ‘life really isn’t fair’ – a view that she is afraid of trying to explain to Eureka.

‘Because, like, when you reach the point of understanding whether or not something is fair or not, you’ve reached a level of sophistication to understand a level of human suffering, and that can be deep,’ she continued.

‘Life really isn’t fair. Bad things happen to good people for no reason. That existential crisis that life isn’t fair is real and it’s one of the deeper problems that we have as human beings and as a society because we don’t have great answers for that.

‘I’m going to let her guide her own understanding of my case. She’ll ask questions, she’ll want to know.

‘She’s going to know from being around me that there’s something about this justice system that is a little questionable, and when she’s ready, she’ll ask me. And I’m going to be totally honest.’

Over the years, Amanda has continued to maintain her innocence – a sentiment that she echoed during the interview, during which she clearly stated: ‘I didn’t f***ing do it.’

Still, Amanda admitted that she considered not passing on her now-notorious surname to her daughter out of fear that it would forever tie her child to her case and the scandal that surrounded it, particularly when it comes to the public speculation about her sex life and her past romantic partners.

‘I did [consider leaving my last name out of Eureka’s name]. It’s the whole question of like – do I embrace my identity or do I not embrace my identity?’ she said.

‘But there’s nothing wrong with me. The world has always acted like there’s something wrong with me and something wrong with my sexuality and that is not my problem.

Knox spent four years in prison in Perugia for the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, who was found dead in the house they shared in November 2007.

She was convicted in December 2009 and sentenced to 28 and a half years, but was acquitted in 2011 after an appeals court found that legal procedures had not been followed and there was no DNA tying her and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to the scene.

A local man, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial after his DNA was found on Kercher’s body and in the room where she died. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2008, but was released in December 2020 and will spend the rest of his sentence doing community work.

Knox was tried again in absentia, convicted again, and then ultimately had the conviction overturned by Italy’s highest court in 2015.

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