Amanda Knox joked about crime scenes and compared prison to the kids' film Chicken Run during her debut stand-up show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Knox, 39, who was convicted and later acquitted of murdering British student Meredith Kercher, had vowed her gig would “honour” her late friend. But moments into the hour-long set, she made light of the horror to roaring applause.
Playroom set and Frozen jokes
Standing in a set made to look like a kids' playroom, she quipped: “Really sorry it looks like a crime scene in here.” She then addressed those convinced of her guilt by singing “Let It Go” from Disney's Frozen. She also joked about the need for shops to stock acquittal greeting cards, saying: “It’s a whole industry I’m telling you.”
She made light of her time behind bars with: "Well, you've all seen Chicken Run."
Kercher family reaction
Knox's controversial quips came hours after Meredith Kercher's sister said she feared the show would trivialise violence against women. Stephanie Kercher told the BBC: “What I would say [to Knox] is to think about the family here, think about her friends and to turn the tables if it was your sister that this had happened to, because I know you have a sister as well.”
Knox hit back in an Instagram post, saying: “Cartwheel honours Meredith Kercher’s memory and calls out the violence that was done to her and to me. Cartwheel is a show about motherhood, raising a daughter in a world that is unfair and dangerous for women, and what it costs to be the kind mother who tells her the truth about that.”
Background of the case
Knox, from Seattle, and Kercher, from Surrey, were exchange students sharing a house in Perugia, Italy. Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were arrested on suspicion of murdering Kercher, 21, who was found dead in their house with her throat cut and sexually assaulted.
Knox was found guilty and spent four years in an Italian prison before she and Sollecito were acquitted on appeal. She returned to the US in 2011. A retrial in 2014 reinstated their convictions, but Italy's top appeals court finally overturned them in 2015.
Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede served 13 years of a 16-year sentence for Kercher's murder after his fingerprints were found at the scene. The court ruled he did not act alone, but after Knox and Sollecito were acquitted, no other accomplices were convicted.
