Amanda Knox has stunned audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by cracking jokes about crime scenes and her time in prison during her highly controversial stand-up debut. Despite previously pledging that her comedy show, Cartwheel, would "honour" her murdered British flatmate Meredith Kercher, the 39-year-old American seemingly made light of the tragedy to rapturous applause from the crowd.
Jokes and Controversy
Taking to a stage designed to resemble a children's playroom, Knox told the audience: "Really sorry it looks like a crime scene in here." During the hour-long performance, she took aim at those who still believe she is guilty by breaking into a rendition of "Let It Go" from the Disney film Frozen. Reflecting on the four years she spent behind bars in Italy, she told the crowd: "Well, you've all seen Chicken Run."
She also chuckled whilst recalling a prison guard who made her watch The Shawshank Redemption – a classic film about a man wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. Nearing the end of her set, she joked that high-street shops should start selling acquittal greeting cards, remarking: "It's a whole industry I'm telling you."
Family Condemnation
The controversial material came just hours after Meredith Kercher's sister, Stephanie, publicly condemned the show. Speaking to the BBC, she expressed concerns that the performance would trivialise both Meredith's tragic death and violence against women in general, The Mirror reports.
"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," Stephanie Kercher stated.
Knox's Defense
Knox, however, defended her actions in a defiant Instagram post. She insisted: "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
The Seattle native and 21-year-old Miss Kercher, who hailed from Surrey, were exchange students sharing accommodation in the Italian university town of Perugia. On 1 November 2007, Meredith was discovered dead in their shared home, having been sexually assaulted and her throat cut.
Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were subsequently arrested on suspicion of the murder. Knox spent four years in an Italian prison after an initial guilty verdict. The pair were freed on appeal and Knox returned to the US in 2011, though a retrial in 2014 saw their convictions temporarily reinstated. Italy's highest appeals court definitively cleared them both in 2015.
Meanwhile, Rudy Guede, who was born in the Ivory Coast, served 13 years of a 16-year sentence for the murder after his fingerprints were discovered at the scene. Although the courts ruled that he did not act alone, no other individuals have been convicted since the acquittals of Knox and Sollecito.
Cartwheel is scheduled to run at the festival until August 17.
