End of a Nightmare: Homecoming Overwhelms Knox
Amanda Knox is finally home in Seattle, Wash. Tuesday, 30 hours after her conviction for murdering a roommate in Perugia, Italy was overturned by a jury and two judges due to weak evidence.
Knox, 24, flew in from London, her plane touching down at the Sea-Tac Airport 5:08 p.m. Family members, relatives, well-wishers and 150 reporters were waiting for her at the airport.
The family's press conference was brief with Knox saying her arrival was overwhelming and seemed unreal, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
The Seattle Times also quoted her as saying, "Thank you to everyone who believed in me, who defended me, who supported my family. My family is the most important thing to me right now and I just want to go and be with them."
Knox's parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas also thanked supporters and friends.
Theodore Simon, the Philadelphia lawyer of the Knox family, described the homecoming as a "grueling nightmare" endured by Knox and her family. Simon reiterated Knox's innocence.
"Amanda Knox was wrongly convicted. She was not, absolutely not, responsible for the tragic loss of Meredith Kercher," Seattle PI quoted him as saying.
Knox will spend her time with her family for the meantime, unmindful just yet of the stardom coming her way. Her sensational case had turned her from a nobody to a public figure because of the media coverage of her entire trial that transfixed Americans, Britons and Italians to the TV.
Meredith Kercher, the victim, was from South London and she went to the same university in Perugia where Knox went until her murder in the room she shared with the latter in 2007.
Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for the crime in 2009 but they appealed.
Kercher's family is appealing the reversal of Knox and Sollecito's convictions.