>> amanda knox is now back home here in seattle after spending nearly four years in an italian prison. she was released after appealing her murder conviction. but she remains haunted by the nightmare that began to unfold when she was just a young student. >> amanda knox was going into her junior year of college. her mother etta recalls amanda the fresh-faced 20-year-old intent on adventure. >> she was going to study an broutd, going into college somewhere. she didn't know where yet. >> amanda would decide on perugia,ity la. her sister deanna remembers when she moved into this house which she shared with three other girls, two italians and bun one british constituent named meredith kercher. >> why was she so set on that apartment. >> i think it's because of the people really. it was close to the college and her roommates are the sweetest people in the world. >> but after only six weeks in italy, on the night of november 1st, 2007, amanda's overseas adventure would take a bizarre turn. amanda claims she slept over with her boyfriend rafael so see the toes that night. according to her, they cooked dinner at his house, smoked hashish and made love. on that same night, meredith kercher returned to the home she shared with amanda after watching a movie with friends. sometime between 11:00 p.m. and midnight, a witness living in these apartments across the street claimed to hear a scream. and multiple footsteps running away from the house in opposite directions. the next day, knox says she returned home to shower and change clothes. then she noticed something was wrong. one roommate's room was turned upside down. a rock on the floor and a broken window. meredith kercher's door was locked and she wasn't answering her cell phone. >> i got the phone calls about when she came to her house, and amanda kept saying i can't get ahold of meredith. her door's locked. there was lots of concern and i said okay, you know, call the police. and then she did, and you know, the police came and then they had actually one of the other roommates' boyfriends broke down the door because the police wouldn't do it. >> behind meredith's bedroom door was her body. covered by a blanket. blood everywhere. meredith had been sexually assaulted, stabbed and slashed in the neck. a bloody hand print left on the wall, bloody footprints on floor. as police began to process the crime scene, suspicion soon began to fall upon amanda. partly due to what police believed was a faked forced entry through the window. observers also thought amanda's behavior was odd. she and rafaelle stayed in the living room while the others broke into meredith's room. francesco more res ca is an attorney hired by the victim's family. he says amanda's behavior was enough to make her a suspect. >> the famous behavior of amanda knox cannot be justifiable if we will compare it to the way normal people behave. >> in this video, amanda and her boyfriend comfort each other outside the house. but at the police station, witnesses say they laughed and made faces, heightening suspicions about them. to amanda knox and rafael little sollecito, the police station wos become all too familiar over the coming days. her far kirk recalls the week after the grisly discovery. >> between the time that they will actually found meredith and when the amanda was arrested, there was roughly a 90-hour time frame and i'm ballparking the numbers there. during that time, amanda was in the police station for questioning for i believe it was 52 hours. >> as the days passed, the interrogations became longer and more intense. without a lawyer, amanda continued to talk to the police. a decision her mother regrets to this day. >> you know, would have, could have, should have, i should have insisted that she leave the country. i should have insisted that she not talk to anybody. i should have gotten her a lawyer immediately. >> meanwhile, media interest surrounding crime began to surge. information was leaked to the press almost daily. reports stating the victim knew her killer or even, a woman committed the crime went viral. soon, articles were reporting that meredith kercher was the victim of a sex game gone wrong. >> in italy, you could make up a story or you could say you heard it from some guy that was laying in a ditch and it could be, you could write the story and all of a sudden, it goes viral. >> as the media circus grew, so did the pressure on police to solve the case. on the night of november 5th, the police interrogated amanda all night and into the next morning. it was during this session amanda confessed she was at the house that night, her boss patrick la mum ba was there, as well. at that point, amanda knox officially ceased to be a witness. she became the suspect. the police held a press conference later that day announcing to the world they had solved the crime, case closed. according to police, meredith kercher had been killed because she would not take part in a sex game, a sex game orchestrated by amanda knox, her boyfriend rafaelle and patrick lamumba. >> translator: i've always said that this is a crime that was born of succession. it was step by step. there was no planning. >> all three were arrested and charged with murder, but the tabloid press turned their attention to one of the accused in particular. amanda. when the papers hit newstands the next day, foxy knoxy would be all over the front page. in the weeks and months that followed their arrests, new evidence would emerge, a knife found in raphaelly's apartment, both amanda's and meredith's dna on it. meredith's bra clasp tested positive for rafael's dna. a holeless man came forward caming to have seen the couple near the house on the night of the murder. >> we kept thinking, oh, this is a big mistake. it will get cleared up and got really weird with the trial and it kept going and going and going. >> the world was captivated. two attractive young women, one accused of killing the other. so what really 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[ male announcer ] werther's original caramel chocolate. what comfort tastes like. with an investigation nearly finished and three people under arrest, the press began to focus on who is amanda knox. the picture they painted wasn't very flattering. >> i think some of the biggest problems that have happened with my sister have come from the media, the whole angel face with cold eyes, the whole foxy knoxy thin thing. >> reporter: to know the real foxy knoxy, you have to go back to amanda's hometown. seattle, washington. >> amanda was born here in seattle in the summer of 1987, the day before i turned 25. so our birthdays are one day apart. >> born into a middle class family, her mother a school teacher, her father an accountant, divorced when amanda and her sister were still very young. >> and so growing up, it was i spent majority of my time with my mom. it was every other weekend that me and amanda went to our dad's. >> always active, amanda earned her nickname, foxy knoxy at a young age and not from where you might have thought. >> and soccer is where she earned that nickname that's come back to haunt her. >> oh, yeah, at the age of 8, the 8-year-olds who don't know anything but call each other all kinds of funny nick napes gave her foxy knoxy. >> she was not a typical teenager. amanda was driven and focused. unlike most eighth graders, amanda wanted an academic challenge. so for high school, she chose seattle prep. a prestigious private school that her parents could not afford. >> amanda was scholarshiped out to seattle prep. so it's not like she was given a silver spoon or anything by any means. >> chris johnson an english teacher at seattle prep, recalls a girl who was different from her classmates. >> she was so diligent that she signed up for an extra english class at a time when she could have had a free period, she took an extra class so she stood out. >> and as for boys. >> did she have many serious boyfriends before? >> no. she was definitely a very late bloomer. i don't even remember a boyfriend till college. >> she knew very early on that she wanted to see the world. >> i think amanda started talking even in middle school about wanting to travel and to see different places. >> reporter: amanda would take her love of adventure to the university of washington where she would major in linguistics, her friend, and drew, describes a woman open to the world. >> i think it was her just open personality to you know see the good things in people and have always a positive attitude about everybody and everything in the world. >> in college, amanda knew she wanted to spend a year abroad, but to do that, she would have to raise money that her parents did not have. >> how did she do it. >> she had to save $10,000. she lived extremely frugally and i mean spent no money on anything. and then worked several jobs at a time, numerous jobs at a time, saved every penny. >> amanda chose to study in perugia, italy, a small town in the center of the country. in the late summer of 2007, amanda and her sister deanna traveled there to get her settled. on the very first day in town, deanna found amanda a place to live. >> we were walking around, and the first thing amanda did, of course, was go down to her university. so we walked down there, and she went inside and i sat outside. and this girl came up and was posting something on the fence right next to where i was sitting and i looked over and it said, all i could read because i don't speak italian was apartmento. >> and that was the apartment? >> uh-huh, that was it. >> once settled in perujia, amanda seemed to be living her dream. >> the first pictures she ever sent me were of the little house that she had found. and i was kind of looking at her going you have that kind of a view out of your backyard? and it was really you know, i was very happy for her. >> and just eight days before meredith's murder, amanda met a boy. an italian student named raf fell lay sollecito. >> was she falling in love? i thought she sounded like a girl who was definitely very infasiated with this young man who was showing her around. they went over to asisi. so yeah, there was definitely a big infatuation there. i don't think they had time to fall in love by the time they were arrested. >> amanda knox devoted daughter, student, lover? >> according to this man, murderer. >> is amanda knox evil? 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[ male announcer ] progresso. 40 soups 100 calories or less. almost immediately after police say she confessed to her crime, amanda knox recants. she tells her parents she broke under stress. in court she would tell jurors how a police officer struck her from behind, how she was denied water, food, a translator and how she says under pressure by police, she was asked repeatedly to dream up, imagine scenarios for how it could have happened. this spring, cnn traveled to perugia, italy, to sit down with the lead prosecutor of amanda knox. for three that yours juliano ma knee knee answered our questions and his critics that he prosecuted knox with little evidence, that he played on emotions and rumor rather than facts, and lynchpin of his case, the so-called confession of amanda knox was coerced out of a frightened college student. >> nobody hit her? >> translator: no, absolutely not. >> was she asked to imagine scenarios? so she's lying? >> translator: absolutely. you either see the person or not. i can't ask a person what he or she imagines. this question would make no sense. >> that's not all that wouldn't make sense because it turns out virtually everything amanda knox told her interrogators the night of her so-called confession was a lie. amanda knox in this statement told police she was in the house the night of the murder and saw her boss, nightclub owner patrick lumumba, and meredith kercher go into meredith's room, and she heard screams. amanda's statement adds, "i am very confused. i imagined what could have happened." police apparently didn't bother to check the facts about lumumba. they immediately arrested amanda knox, raffaello sollecito and patrick lumumba for the murder of meredith kercher. ma knee knee and police announcing to the public, case solved. giuliano mignini admitted to us, even without any evidence, he knew almost the moment he arrived and laid eyes on amanda knox and rafaelle sollecito, they were involved in the murder. prior to the forensic investigation, prior to everything really, your intuition or your detective knowledge led you to amanda knox and raffaello sollecito? >> translator: after the first few weeks, we were convinced because of the behavior of the two people and especially amanda that they were both involved in a crime. >> but almost immediately after the arrests, mignini had a problem. the third suspect patrick lumumba had an airtight alibi. he was in his crowded bar that night. he could not have been involved. then the actual forensic tests came back. >> when i looked at it, i was horrified. >> greg hampikian is a forensic biologist at boise state university and director muof idaho's innocence project. he also was working with the knox defense team. he says italian investigators did a good job processing the crime scene, collected excellent evidence, but clung to shakier evidence that proved their theory, a classic error, he says, a prosecutor who trusted his gut feeling instead of the science that at that time was pointing to another suspect. >> they didn't like the way amanda behaved, whatever that means, and so they wanted to investigate her and raffaello and her boss. when the dna is finally processed, it's not any of their suspects. so what do you do? what would you do? you let them go. >> as patrick lumumba was being released from jail, investigators analyzing the bloody evidence left at the crime scene found an entirely new suspect. his name? rudy guede, a known petty criminal from the ivory coast who fled to germany shortly after the murder. it turns out guede's handprint made in meredith kercher's own blood was found in the victim's room. guede's dna found inside the victim's body in her vagina. his dna on her clothing, on his -- her purse, his feces even found on used toilet paper left near an unflushed toilet down the hall and something else. guede didn't even know raffaello and had only met amanda a few times with neighbors. >> knowing all of that and when he finally got extradited from germany back to italy, we thought, thank god, this is over. >> it wasn't. prosecutor mignini simply swapped suspects. amanda knox, raffaello sollecito and now rudy guede had come to meredith kercher hoping to include her in an orgy. when kercher refused, they pulled out knives and killed her. julian nomah knee knee would stick to his instincts despite the forensic evidence. you were fixated, according to the defense, on amanda knox and raffaello sollecito and kept imaging new scenarios that made these two people guilty. >> translator: no, absolutely not. i did what i did because i was convinced given the evidence that had been gathered that they were responsible. i am absolutely convinced. >> rudy guede, the african drifter, was quickly convicted and sent to prison, implicating amanda and raffaello after which his sentence was reduced. in 2009, mignini would bring his case against amanda knox and her boyfriend to trial. 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[ male announcer ] just like you, business pro. just like you. go national. go like a pro. from the cnn world headquarters in atlanta, here are your headlines this hour. republican presidential candidate ron paul has won the values voter summit straw poll. the gathering of social conservatives in washington gave paul a solid victory over his party rivals. paul got 37% of the vote. cain finished with 23% and rick santorum came in third with 16%. 99%. >> anti-corporate anger keeps spreading. "occupy wall street" demonstrations have now been held in more than a dozen cities across the country, including chicago, philadelphia, and austin, texas. protesters are taking on a number of issues, including income disparities and corporate greed. the pro football world is mourning a legend tonight. long-time oakland raiders owner al davis has died. he began coaching the raiders in 1963 ran took ownership of the team beginning in 1966. the raiders won three super bowls under his leadership. no cause of death has been released but he had been in declining health recently. he was 82 years old. tho