Amanda Knox was expected to lay low yesterday following her return home after being acquitted of murder and sexual assault in Italy, as speculation mounted about possible book and film deals.
Fighting back tears, the 24-year-old US student thanked her supporters on Tuesday and said it felt unreal to be back in her hometown of Seattle after a four-year ordeal behind bars.
“I’m really overwhelmed right now. I was looking down from the airplane and it seemed like everything wasn’t real,” Knox said as she addressed supporters and media at Seattle airport shortly after her plane landed.
“What’s important for me to say is just thank you to everyone who’s believed in me, who’s defended me, who has supported my family,” she said in her first public comments since being freed, brushing away tears.
“My family’s the most important thing to me right now. I just want to go be with them. So thank you for being there for me,” she said.
Her parents, Kurt Knox and Etta Mellas, also offered their thanks, as they accompanied their daughter off the plane and back home.
Lawyer Theodore Simon said Knox had been through “a trying and grueling four-year nightmarish marathon that no child or parent should have to endure.”
The family has said little about her immediate plans, but reports suggest she will try to lie low in Seattle and take time to readjust to normal life, despite the huge media interest.
Experts say she could earn millions of dollars in book, TV or film rights for the story of her ordeal.
“Amanda Knox is going to be big, because she is so young and she’s so all-American-looking, and we go by how things look,” said Charlotte Gusay, a Los Angeles literary agent.
Knox left Rome swiftly after the decision was handed down by an Italian court.
She had been convicted along with two others and sentenced to 26 years in prison over the murder and sexual assault of her British housemate Meredith Kercher, then 21, who was found stabbed to death in the cottage they shared.
Knox’s ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who had also appealed his conviction on the same charges, was likewise acquitted on Monday in the university town of Perugia in central Italy where Knox and Kercher were studying.
The only person now convicted of the crime is local drifter Rudy Guede, who is serving 16 years after his earlier appeals were rejected.
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