Amanda Knox returned to Seattle After four years in an Italian prison, the death of her roommate is still a mystery. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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Knox addressed the media at the airport and thanked her supporters who she said believed in her and defended her. She went on to say she wanted to take some time to just be with her family.
“Thank you to everyone who has believed in me, who has defended me and supported my family,” Knox said.
Knox, who cried when she saw her supporters, sat on a chair with her family while her attorney, Theodore Simon, spoke to reporters just minutes after a plane carrying her and her parents landed Tuesday in Seattle.
Friends and family who held spaghetti dinners, bowling events and concerts to raise money for Knox’s defense were thrilled to have her home, but her supporters were a small presence at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport compared to the media: dozens of U.S. and international reporters, along with cameras and satellite trucks.
Knox’s life turned around dramatically Monday when an Italian appeals court threw out her conviction in the sexual assault and fatal stabbing of her British roommate. On Tuesday a courtroom picture of Knox crying after the verdict was read appeared on the front pages of newspapers in Italy, the U.S., Britain and around the world.
The court’s decision, fueled by doubts over DNA evidence, stunned the victim’s family and angered the prosecution, which insists that she was among three people who killed 21-year-old Meredith Kercher. But for Knox’s grandmother Elisabeth Huff, “it was like the weight of the world had gone.”
“We all are as happy as can be. I can’t tell you how long we’ve been looking forward to this day,” Huff told The Associated Press outside her home in West Seattle, a tight-knit community a few miles across Elliott Bay from downtown.
“WELCOME HOME AMANDA,” read the marquee at a record store in the neighborhood where Knox grew up. Another welcome sign was hung at her father’s house. A bar offered half-price drinks to celebrate her acquittal. At least one TV station in Washington state tracked the progress of her flight on the air using a plane-tracking website.
Knox, 24, left Perugia’s Capanne prison Monday night amid cheers that a companion compared to those at a soccer stadium.
Hundreds of inmates — most of them in the men’s wing — shouted “Amanda, ciao!” and “Freedom!” as she walked into the central courtyard, said Corrado Maria Daclon, head of the Italy-US Foundation, which championed Knox’s cause. Daclon said Knox jumped a little for joy and waved to the prisoners.
She was soon on her way home, protected by the darkened windows of a Mercedes that led her out of the prison in the middle of the night, and then Tuesday morning to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport. She flew from Rome to London, where she took a direct British Airways flight to Seattle, flying business class with full-length seat and menu options including champagne, smoked salmon and prawn salad.
She and her family were on the plane’s secluded upper deck. At least nine members of media organizations were on board below, but a flight attendant blocked them from climbing the stairs “to preserve the privacy” of passengers.
As the plane neared Seattle, the flight crew told reporters that once the plane landed, they would have to remain seated while Customs officials escorted Knox and her entourage out of the plane.
“You will not see her,” the cabin crew chief said.
Knox’s family planned to hold a news conference after the plane landed late Tuesday afternoon, but it was unclear whether Knox herself would speak then.
At the airport, 16-year-old Amra Plavcic shook her head at the dozens of reporters setting up for the news conference, within sight of the gate where Knox’s plane was to land.
“I don’t think this is important. It’s way too much,” said Plavcic, who was with her mother awaiting a relative who was on Knox’s flight.
Knox was a University of Washington student studying abroad in Perugia when Kercher was killed in 2007.
“Those who wrote, those who defended me, those who were close, those who prayed for me,” Knox wrote in a letter released just hours before she left Italy, “I love you.”
