Amanda Knox — the pretty American college student convicted in Italy of murdering her roommate during an orgy — might be the victim of anti-Americanism.
Nina Burleigh just spent seven months in Perugia researching the case for a Broadway Books release due this spring.
“The most surprising thing for me was the level of anti-Americanism this case brought out in the open,” Burleigh told Page Six. “The Knox family was attacked on issues of class because of what they wore and how they behaved, and were accused of American arrogance based on a rather pathetic and ineffectual p.r. effort.”
Knox was convicted in December and sentenced to 26 years in prison for the 2007 sex murder of British student Meredith Kercher. Knox’s Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito,and Ivory Coast immigrant Rudy Hermann Guede, who turned state’s evidence, were also convicted.
With Knox’s appeal slated to be heard in the fall, her family went on Oprah Winfrey‘s show last week, where Winfrey basically said that Italian prosecutors should be ashamed of themselves.
“I don’t go quite that far, but no one can keep a straight face and say the Italians had solid proof that Amanda Knox did what they say she did,” Burleigh told us. “That said, Amanda Knox is an odd duck, seems to have a rather loose grip on reality, and the Italians didn’t know what to make of her. And I think American cops would have been suspicious at first, too.”
Burleigh, who hopes to interview Knox and Sollecito in jail, said of Italian perceptions of crime in general, “[They] also seem to have no concept of ‘robbery gone wrong.’ I can’t tell you how many Italian ‘dottores’ of law and criminology said to me that thieves simply do not kill. Obviously, they’ve missed the news about all the poor bodega owners and 7-Eleven clerks in early graves over here.”