Amanda Knox Has a Message for the University of Idaho Survivors: "Protect Yourself"
Wrongfully convicted of the 2007 murder of her roommate, Amanda Knox — promoting her latest memoir — warned against the "bullsh-t online."
The American woman who grabbed headlines in the mid-2000s when tried in Italy for her roommate's vicious murder has a few choice words for the University of Idaho survivors.
Author and advocate Amanda Knox sat for the Tuesday, March 25, 2025 episode of NewsNation’s Banfield to promote her latest memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning. Sympathetic to the surviving victims of the University of Idaho quadruple homicide that continues to capture a nation, Knox advised them not to take things to heart.
“This is going to be hard for them, but do not take it personally,” she said. “Because whatever people are projecting onto you, they are projecting onto an idea of you that doesn’t exist but says way more about them than it does about you.”
She added, “Protect yourself.”
What happened to Amanda Knox?
Knox garnered the public’s fury when she and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were wrongfully convicted of the 2007 murder of British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in their Perugia apartment, about 100 miles north of Rome. The couple spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before they were cleared of the murder conviction, though Knox was reconvicted by the Italian courts last year for slander in 2009.
A third person, Rudy Guede, opted for a fast-track trial and served 13 years before being released on good behavior.
Knox told NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield she found it “deeply deeply troubling” that outside parties looked to blame the Idaho survivors who lived in the same off-campus residence with the victims: 21-year-olds Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves, and 20-year-old Ethan Chapin. All four victims were stabbed to death in their beds in the early morning of November 13, 2022.
Knox’s experience was similar, she said, in that investigators “immediately latched” themselves onto an idea that a roommate killed Kercher, thus ignoring signs of a break-in.
Although the two surviving victims in Moscow, Idaho — identified in the press as Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke — are not facing prosecution, the online vitriol continues.
“You know what, you don’t have to engage with the bulls-t online,” Knox continued. “It really doesn’t matter. It isn’t a part of who you are.”
However, Knox said it wasn’t a bad idea to look into a “victim support person” to aid them through the emotions resulting from online “trolls.” In Knox’s case, “very explicit death threats” prompted her to enlist the help of the F.B.I. to track some individuals down.
“Be safe, but do not take it personally,” she continued.
Knox isn’t the only person to use her unfortunate experience to help the Idaho victims. In 2023, Alanna Zabel — who found her sorority sister raped and nearly beaten to death in 1992 — had her own words of wisdom for Mortensen.
“I really hope that the media can just back off a little bit…and allow her to heal, because it’s going to be a long process,” Zabel said.
The University of Idaho survivors
Chilling texts recently revealed in court records between survivors Mortensen and Funke on the night of the murders painted a grim picture of the quadruple murder for which Bryan Kohberger now stands accused. The female roommates messaged back and forth between 4:22 a.m. and 4:24 a.m., around the time Mortensen spotted a male stranger with “bushy eyebrows” wearing something akin to a ski mask outside her bedroom door.
Both survivors are expected to take the stand when the murder trial begins on August 11, 2025.
Kohberger, a Washington State University grad student who studied criminology and criminal justice, faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. In 2023, a judge entered a not-guilty plea on Kohberger’s behalf after the defendant opted to “stand silent” in a Latah County court. One year later, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the defense for a change of venue so proceedings could take place 300 miles south in Ada County, as reported by NBC News.
Kohberger faces the death penalty, if convicted.
A motive for the crime has not been revealed.
