Amanda Knox: Can Beauty Kill?

Meredith Kercher's murder the perfect ingredients for becoming a frenzied, salacious media storm: the mysterious murder of a young, British, pretty girl in a provincial Italian city, allegations of drugs and sexual deviancy, topped off with a two-faced American girl whose rumoured crazed appetite for perverse sex allegedly pushed two men to kill in a sex game gone wrong. Amanda Knox was recently acquitted alongside former lover Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in November 2007. Four long years and two high profile trials have seen her portrayed as an angel-faced killer, a Venus in furs, a witch and a “diabolical, satanic, demonic she-devil” by prosecution lawyers; the most scathing attacks coming from  Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer, whom she wrongfully accused of the murder at the beginning of the case.

 It is unusual for a defendant in a murder case to be lambasted and demonized to such an extent, and what is even more striking is that such personifying was not limited to the tabloids but permeated the very courtroom itself. The fact that she was beautiful was undoubtedly a factor that worked to her disadvantage. Had she not been so photogenic, the prosecution’s case, which rested on her being a “Venus in fur” who seduced and led two men to kill for her, would not have been so self-propelling. FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole explains that attractive women are disadvantaged in these cases as the attention shifts from the facts to their physical appearance and creates a two-case scenario. On the one hand the good looks help the defendant in that the jury is unable to reconcile the pretty face with the odious crime. However, when a sexual motive is added and it is implied that the good looks may have abetted the crime, the jury becomes more likely to view the defendant as an “evil femme-fatale”. There is a fascination today with the popular image of female evil, that of a degenerate criminal lurking behind a seemingly innocent, pretty face. When presented with such an individual we are eager to deconstruct their personality and trawl through the most infinitesimal details, to then reconstruct it in a way that fits the malicious femme-fatale persona.

 Thus Amanda Knox’s past and present behaviour was mercilessly scrutinised and the most preposterous conclusions were drawn from it, as evidenced by the unwarranted interest in her purchase of underwear after Meredith’s body was discovered. One need only to look at the case of Casey Anthony in the United States, where her being a pretty woman and allegations of sexual deviancy led to a media frenzy similar to that seen with Amanda Knox. It is tempting to claim that popular culture, with its images of a “good girl gone bad” and an ever-increasing interest in extreme sexual behaviour, has permeated society and created an insatiable appetite for cases that appeal to the archetype of the mysterious femme fatale who hides under a mask of callow puerility. Even the defence appealed to popular culture by comparing Amanda to the shapely cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, who is a “faithful and loving woman” despite her sultry looks. However, there is no doubt that as we frantically attempt to discover the “real” Amanda by postulating on all the possible faces she may have, we tend to forget that human personality is not clear cut in anyone and reduce Amanda to a two-dimensional cartoon character. It has been taken for granted that her good looks hold the key to her personality, that somehow they explain and indeed justify this heinous crime, and because of this we have proceeded, untrammelled, in dressing her in the most stereotypical female criminal clothes.