Amanda Knox
Appearances
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
It might have been sooner if she wasn't in such a remote area, but it was the type of path you wouldn't even know was there unless you knew. By 8 p.m., a flurry of people, including paramedics, rush Dana into the hospital on a gurney. And there, in the waiting room, is her family. They've been there for about two hours.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Ever since they figured out something was wrong, and now they are watching their Dana, 23-year-old Dana Ireland, fighting for her life. When detectives speak with Dana's older sister, Sandy, in the waiting room, they discover Sandy moved to the Big Island a few years earlier, and Dana came to visit often. Then, only two months prior, Dana decided to stay in Hawaii for good.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
So for the holidays, Dana and Sandy's parents, John and Louise Ireland, decided to fly in from Virginia and join them on the Big Island for a few weeks. The family says earlier that day, before they were planning on celebrating Christmas Eve, Dana decided to go on a bike ride. So she borrowed her sister Sandy's bike and headed out to her friend Mark's house, which is about a seven-mile ride.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
But when Sandy and her boyfriend Jim were driving over to their parents' rental house around 5 p.m., they saw something on the side of the road that caught their attention. A crowd of people all gathered around what looked like the scene of an accident. Sandy went from curious to terrified when she recognized the crushed bike lying in the road.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
It was her bike, the one she had just let Dana borrow a couple hours earlier. Next to it was Dana's wristwatch, the band completely broken, a foot-long chunk of blonde hair, and a single white athletic shoe, still tied. Sandy and Jim rushed to her parents' rental, which was just minutes away, to tell them what they saw, and they all headed back to the scene.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
But when they arrived, Dana's mom, Louise, saw what was going on, assumed Dana had been involved in some kind of accident, and so the family headed over to the local hospital in case she showed up. But they never imagined she would show up like this. They watch in shock as the doctors do their best to save Dana. But she is just too far gone.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
A little after midnight on Christmas morning, Dana dies after hours of attempted lifesaving measures. Her cause of death, exsanguination, or blood loss, due to multiple traumatic injuries of the head, neck, chest, abdomen, and pelvis. In Dana's autopsy report, Dr. Charles Reinhold notes a disturbing amount of injuries.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Dana's chest, back, arms, legs, and face were covered with abrasions, cuts, and bruises. Her collarbone and pelvis were fractured. She had extensive hemorrhaging in her heart, lungs, stomach, and bladder. But the doctors find something even more disturbing and which can't be explained by a car accident. a bite mark on her left breast, and the presence of semen.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
So while Dana's family is reeling from her sudden death, police scour not just the one, but the two scenes related to Dana, which are about five miles apart. The first scene is on Kapoho Kai Drive, where Dana's bike was discovered. They find tire impressions in the dirt.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
They make plaster casts of the tracks and take several pictures of tire marks, including a single deep gouge mark on Kapoho Kai Drive, which larger double tire tracks lead into. Detectives identify the gouge mark as the point at which the bicycle tire was driven into the road from the collision. They find Dana's black bicycle seat on the side of the road near the tracks.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Once finished at the collision scene, detectives head five miles away to the Waawaa Fishing Trail, where Dana had been found. She was about 80 to 90 feet off the main road in the bushes, just off the right side of the trail. Leaves surrounding her were bloody, too, as if she'd been placed or possibly thrown there in an effort to conceal her.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Her jean shorts and her missing white avia tennis shoe are found nearby. But there's more. There's a child's black McGregor shoe, the left one only, and two white socks stuffed inside. There's also a blue-colored T-shirt, size large, with a print of a station wagon and the Jimmy Z logo, which was a popular brand at the time, especially on the Big Island.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Then, up the trail, about halfway between the road and where Dana was found, a black knit adult sock and a red panty, size large. Police also find cigarette butts and two Corona beer bottles. Everything gets collected and tagged. But what is at the scene is only part of the story. The question still stands as to how Dana could have ended up there.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
After speaking with her family and witnesses at both crime scenes, authorities tried to build a rough timeline of events based on everything they know so far, which begins at the home of Mark Evans in Apohika'o at 4.10 p.m.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Mark was the friend Dana went to visit on her bike the night of the murder, and he told police that while their relationship in the beginning leaned a little towards the romantic side, they were totally platonic. Sometime shortly thereafter, the police speak to a witness who says they saw a woman who looked like Dana passing places called Shacks and Secrets, both local surfing hangout spots.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Based on this, authorities determined she was run over at approximately 4.40 p.m., less than half a mile from her parents' vacation land rental home, which she was most likely headed back to for the family's Christmas Eve dinner.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Then, as she was riding her bike, she was struck in the rear by a vehicle heading in the Makai direction, aka east towards the sea, on Kapoho Kai Drive, which would indicate that Dana was also traveling in the Makai direction, on the right side of the road, before someone grabbed her and drove away to move her to that isolated area along the trail.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
It's 9.21 a.m. on Tuesday, January 24th, 2023. And a man named Ian Schweitzer is standing in a courtroom in Hilo, Hawaii. He's not a total stranger to this feeling or to the criminal justice system in general. He's been here before. But this time, it's for very different reasons. Over 23 years ago, Ian was convicted of a crime he firmly asserts he did not commit.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
There, she would endure a nightmare before being left for dead. As detectives continued to work to fill in the pieces, a flurry of calls and leads about trucks, vans, and SUVs believed to be in the area flows in from the community. One comes from Eric Carlsmith. He lives on the first house on the left on Ililani Road, and he says he was with his girlfriend Karina on Christmas Eve.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
He tells police he noticed a pickup truck facing southwest at the intersection of Ililani Road and Kapohokai Drive. This was the spot where Dana was hit.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
So police are focusing on a truck or van, and this makes sense. The road from Vacationland to the Ocean Trail off Beach Road, where Dana was found, is barely drivable by a car. It's a tucked away, isolated, unpaved fishing trail of sorts, and really only known to the locals in the area. It'd be hard to find otherwise. But obviously, they still need more.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
And fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, there's no shortage of witness accounts. And this is the part where I would have walked you through detectives interviewing each one of them from the day Dana was found. Like Ida Smith, the woman who first found Dana.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Or Demian Fierro, who was 10 at the time and was one of the first ones to discover the broken bike in the road.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
But like I said before, the story we were planning on telling you when we first started investigating in 2023 is a very different one today in 2025. Which means how we tell it to you is also very different, because what holds weight now is not the same as then. So instead, in this series, I'll be focusing on what you need to know to understand how we ended up where we are today.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
How so many lives got tangled up in one of the most devastating and high-profile cases to ever hit the Big Island. Coming up on this season of 3... There were no winners. There were no winners in this entire situation.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
And for almost two decades, the Innocence Project has been trying to help him prove it. Ian's team, including the legendary Barry Sheck, who co-founded the original Innocence Project in 1992, well, they would spend the next seven hours stating their case in front of Judge Kubota.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
That's Ken Lawson, the co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. They have been looking into Ian's case since around 2006. But when Ken started in 2010, he took it over, and ever since, he's been damn near determined to prove his client's innocence. But no one had predicted that today would be the day. Especially not Ian.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
To everyone's surprise, the judge announces his verdict later that same day.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
It's a feeling very few people understand. Being charged and convicted of a crime you didn't commit. While his story played out a little differently, Ian's brother Sean is also one of those people.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
I'm Amanda Knox, and while studying abroad in 2007, what was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime college experience turned into a life-altering nightmare. One I would spend the following eight years trapped inside of and will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
In February 2023, after Ian was released from prison, I traveled to Hawaii and met him in person. Little did I know that almost two years later, I would be sitting down now with you all to tell you what has happened since that very conversation. Behind every wrongful conviction is a devastating and complicated web that is almost impossible to untangle.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
But during this series, we're going to try to do just that. Because justice doesn't have to be complicated. And the victims in this case deserve clarity. Justice too long delayed is justice denied.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Over the past 18 months, we've had a team of people who've been out on the Hawaiian islands investigating this story, talking to the people that were there firsthand, some who have never spoken out before, recording in-depth interviews that you will hear nowhere else. We've poured through nearly 40,000 pages of documents about this case.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
We've listened to countless hours of audio, from witness stories and confessions to secret grand jury testimony and never-before-heard interviews with jailhouse informants. All so we could discover the truth behind the murder of Dana Ireland and the three families who will never be the same because of it.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
But what we didn't expect was that the story would change drastically over the last year and a half as we investigated. Actually, no one did. In July 2024, the world found out who really killed Dana Ireland. A name that never popped up on investigators' radar matched the DNA left at the scene and on the body of Dana Ireland.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
But to understand how we got here, you have to understand what has transpired in the 33 years since Dana Ireland was murdered. I'm Amanda Knox, and this is 3, Season 2. Murder in Vacationland.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
We're asking you to come with us to the Big Island to hear the untold story of what really happened to Dana Ireland and how her death impacted the lives of three families, the Irlands, the Schweitzers, and the Paulines.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Chapter 1, Christmas in Hawaii. It's December 1991 in a small town, Kapoho, located on the eastern end of what's known as the Big Island of Hawaii. It's not the place most mainlanders think of when they imagine the Hawaii islands. It's quieter, slower, serene, the ultimate tropical paradise, and often called one of Hawaii's best-kept secrets.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
And within Kapoho, there is this little subdivision called, almost too perfectly, Vacationland. At around 5.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, a local woman named Ida Smith had just gotten home from running some afternoon errands and is settling back when she hears something strange. The call of a hawk? No. She realizes what she's hearing is not bird calls.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
It's sounding more like a girl who is calling for help. Ida quickly follows the direction of the faint screams, which take her towards a vacant house near her property. And then she sees her. About 80 to 90 feet down the narrow gravel roadway towards the waterfront, surrounded by bushes, is a young woman in desperate need of medical attention.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
She is barely clothed, and it's clear she is suffering from numerous injuries by the amount of blood on her. And based on her appearance, Ida also believes the woman has been sexually assaulted.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
Ida books it to the main road on the other side of her home to flag down the first car she sees. Thankfully, it doesn't take long, and in a matter of minutes, a group of individuals, including a nurse who lives nearby, are down there comforting the victim as they anxiously wait for an ambulance to arrive. And they're praying it won't be long, because the woman's condition is only getting worse.
Crime Junkie
MURDERED: Dana Ireland
It's obvious she is in severe pain, and through it, she's trying to make words. Some are coherent, some not. But they can make out her name. Dana. Dana. By 6.20 p.m., an officer makes his way to the scene, but unfortunately, the ambulance doesn't arrive for another hour. Once arrived, Ida and the group watch as Dana is whisked away towards Hilo Hospital, two hours after Ida found her.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
for my safety and who I'd been raised to trust and obey. And they are yelling at me. They are contradicting me. They're telling me that what I'm saying doesn't make any sense. They're telling me that I'm lying. But then on top of that, so these are all, you know, these bullying tactics are very effective at getting people to falsely confess. But on top of that, they lied to me.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
What was the biggest and most egregious lie? The biggest and most egregious lie was that they knew that I was present when the crime occurred. They knew. That's what they told you that— And that was incredibly destabilizing for me because that was not what I remembered. Like I was at my boyfriend's house the entire night. I kept insisting that can't be true, that can't be true.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
But they insisted that it was true and they knew for sure. And so the next lie on top of that was that because I was present and that I had witnessed this crime, I had trauma-induced amnesia. They insisted that my brain didn't remember the truth precisely because I had witnessed the crime and therefore was traumatized.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And my brain had been making up an alternate reality that I thought I was remembering staying at my boyfriend's house when in fact I was at my house when the crime occurred. And you believed it. You started to believe that. I started to believe it because after hours of insisting upon my innocence and that that wasn't true and that I wasn't lying, I started to question myself. Like, I...
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Again, I was suggestible in that moment because there's only so long you can argue with authority figures before you, at least for me, I started to question myself. It's classic gaslighting. They found a text message on my phone that I had sent to my boss, Patrick Lumumba, the night of the murder. He had told me that I didn't need to come in for work at the pub.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I had texted him back, sure, have a good night, see you later. And the police interpreted my text message to him as me making an appointment to see him the night of the murder. They were convinced that they had me dead to rights, that I had let this man, Patrick, into my house and that he was the murderer and that I was covering for him.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And then after hours of berating me and telling me that this was true, I started to question myself. And given what they were suggesting to me, I tried to piece together an idea in my mind of what could have happened that night and what ultimately came out.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
was an incoherent sort of patchwork of of images of like me meeting my boss, Patrick, outside the basketball court and me being in the kitchen. And I never told them that I witnessed him doing anything like I could not imagine. And I could my brain could not bring myself to do it. But it was enough. Just that was enough for them to say, OK, we're going to arrest him.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Yes, if there is a legal avenue for proving my innocence, I will pursue it. It was not my decision to go arrest Patrick Lumumba. He was arrested in the middle of the night by police based on a crazy incoherent statement. He was kept in prison despite the fact that he had an ironclad alibi that came out immediately. Even after he was released, the police held his pub.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
They closed his pub down as part of the investigation, even though it had nothing to do with the murder. And it caused him to incur incredible financial losses. So he had to sell his home in Perugia to pay for those losses. And on top of all of that,
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
There was the psychological trauma of being like ripped from his family's arms in the middle of the night, which hearkened back to a trauma that he had had in childhood where his father was kidnapped in the middle of the night and he never saw his father again. So like trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma, this man has been through hell. Have you all ever spoken?
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
You know, we actually spoke recently. I had never really had a chance to speak to him directly for years and years and years. He reached out to my attorney and said that he wanted to talk to me because he was writing a book. And I sent him an email just explaining to him, like, you know, Patrick, here's what really happened. And I in no way intended to falsely accuse you.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
If anything, I was brainwashed and I immediately retracted my statements. And I was so sorry. And I'm so sorry for everything that he had been through. But I really did not mean to do any of that. And I tried to retract and take it back as soon as I possibly could within hours. And he just wasn't interested. He wasn't interested in hearing it. He wasn't interested in talking about it.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I think because the record is so convoluted. I think that so many different stories arose around this case. And really, a product was delivered by the prosecution and the media that resonated with people, even though it wasn't based on anything and it wasn't true. And that product really was this idea that women hate other women. It really came down to that, this idea that young women—
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
He just wanted me to pay him money. And I think that I'm disappointed by that. I mean, he had the same experience of being arrested and mistreated by the police.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And I don't think police should be allowed to lie to people and create false realities around them because it is when you distort reality around them that someone starts to question their own sanity and they are made accomplices to police misconduct.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
After my conviction, I really settled into this idea that this was my world. It was a very small world. It was very contained. It was very controlled. And it was populated by all of these women who, by comparison to me, were very unlucky. They were abused. They were neglected. They were impoverished. I think I was the only person there who had all of my teeth removed.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
There were like the level of need and poverty that I encountered in that environment stunned me. Like I did not know that there were people who could not read an analog clock or that didn't know that the earth was a sphere. And these were the people that were my community. And. I was also the famous one. I was the one who was getting constant letters.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
So many of these women were just forgotten by everyone, including their own families. So I looked at them and I thought, God, I am so lucky. And one way, you know, a very important way to survive prison is to be useful because it's an environment where there's a lot of need and not a lot of resources.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And I realized very quickly that I was, especially after a year in prison, and by that time I was fluent in Italian, I was able to function effectively. As a translator. So lots of the women that were imprisoned were not Italian, were not fluent in Italian, had no idea what anyone was telling them.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
A lot of people from various African nations, also Eastern Europe. But, you know, there was a couple of Chinese women that were in there at one point. And I was translating for them by like taking I just happened to have this English to Chinese dictionary because I'm a language nerd. Because there were no translators. There were no translators in the prison.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
So I ended up being the unofficial translator for everyone and every language. And then the other thing that became my sort of unofficial job was scribe. Everyone really thought that my handwriting was very beautiful. And when you are someone who is in prison, especially if you're –
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
feeling lonely and are looking for some attention from some male counterpart, wherever he may be, you wanted to appear pretty to them. And the way that you could appear pretty is by having pretty handwriting.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
secretly hate each other and are constantly competing with each other and in certain situations will sexually assault and murder each other. And it was a lie and it's shocking to me that it wasn't seen for what it was at the time. But it was a story that resonated with people and I think continues to resonate with people. And I think that in a big way, it wasn't even about Meredith anymore.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Yes, I'm so glad you brought it up because it is a very human thing to have a sexual identity, to have an intimate identity. And I was being vilified and punished for this perceived...
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
sexuality and I and so I absolutely was in conflict with my own sexuality also like you bring up Raffaele and Raffaele what is a deeply romantic person at heart like we hit it off immediately in part because he was a nerd and I'm I love a good nerd but also because he was just so sweet and romantic with me from the get-go and even while we were you know surviving this insane
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
struggle together, he was ready to continue to pursue a romance with me, even while we were in prison and on trial. And because I was being so punished for my actions, my sexual identity, I resisted it. And I broke it off with him in prison because in part I was feeling I was feeling like the reason I was even in there was because I was a sexually active young woman.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And then over the years, I first of all realized that my life might be spent a great portion of it inside these prison walls and that An intimate life, a sexual life, was a part of being human. It wasn't something to be ashamed of. It wasn't something to repress. It was just one of the things that makes life worth living.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
That is one of the sort of unresolved, I should probably go to therapy for this kind of thing. I'm very claustrophobic. I've actually always been claustrophobic. So that ended up becoming even more aggravated in prison. But at the same time... At the same time, it was almost like an exposure therapy because your perspective of your space makes all the difference.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
So if I was literally sitting in my jail cell, I had options. I could stare at the barred door or, you know, there were two doors to our cell. One of them was a barred door, but even worse was the solid steel door that was closed shut. at nighttime. So it was just like this solid metal door that I could not open. There wasn't even a handle. There was no way that I could open that door.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I think a lot of people really didn't care very much about her or the person who committed the crime. They cared about this idea of a young woman hating another woman enough to sexually assault and murder them. That was titillating and fascinating to people. And that was ultimately the story that made the rounds of the world and resonated with so many people.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
If I looked at that door, I would lose my mind. So instead, I looked out my window. And yes, there are bars on my window, but beyond those bars was a hilltop with a bell tower. There were fields that if you looked close enough, you could see bunnies scampering across it. And just the ability to pivot and change the perspective of, like change the frame of what you are focusing on.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
It didn't mean that door was not there. It meant that it wasn't the only thing that was there. And I've tried to take that framing idea with me outside of the prison environment because even when I came home and I found myself in my childhood bedroom... In a way that I was in another prison cell because I could, you know, look out of my window when I was in prison.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I couldn't even do that when I first came home because there were paparazzi standing outside, like right outside of my house, just pointing their cameras at my windows. And so we had to have all of the windows closed and like shuttered and draped. And I remember feeling really claustrophobic, like, oh, my God, oh, my God, I thought I was going to come out of prison.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And now I'm feeling even more trapped. I can't leave my house. I can't leave my room. I can't open the windows. I can't, like, I was struggling with panic attacks.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Oh, thank you for asking that. It's true that I didn't know Meredith very well. I had only known her for a few weeks. That said, when you study abroad, you get to know people really quickly because both of us were new arrivals to Perugia. We were both at the very same moment of our lives. You know, I was 20. She was 21. She was studying journalism. I was studying languages.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And we both happened to rent a room in this beautiful little house overlooking the countryside, and it was perfect. It was that beautiful time of your life when everything is possible and you have every reason to expect to have beautiful experiences. And, you know, I feel so horrible about how she has been misrepresented in the media as well.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Like, the image of Meredith that was presented by the prosecution was of this, like— uptight, judgmental, you know, English girl. And that was not at all who she was. She was, you know, sure, she was a little bit more introverted than me, but she was very kind and very silly. And I remember thinking both that she was very sophisticated and elegant.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And I think part of that was because she had a beautiful British accent. And I always was impressed by that. But other than that, like she also kind of took care of me. Like she was always asking me if I was getting home safe or who I was going out with and just checking in on me and had this very big sisterly air.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Like one thing that haunts me to this day is we found this really cool little vintage shop and she found this sparkly silver dress that she was very excited. She bought because she wanted to wear back home for New Year's Eve. And, of course, she never got to wear that dress, and it just haunts me to this day. Like, I was right there with her.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
She was so excited, and I don't even know what happened to it, you know? Like, so much of our lives, like, in a big way, two very young women went to Perugia, and one of them didn't get to go home, and one of them came home completely and utterly changed. And I... It's a grieving process for me, for both of us.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I did, yeah. I think I've struggled both with survivor's guilt as well as with, someone just pointed this out to me, it's like survivor's guilt by proxy, where other people are sort of enforcing survivor's guilt onto me. And I understand where it's coming from, right?
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Like so many people only know me in the context of her murder, and in particular through this very negative lens in the context of her murder. And so because they don't imagine me in the fullness of my human being, They sort of anything that I do, whether purposefully publicly or not purposefully publicly, like when I got married, I didn't in no way intended that for that to be a public event.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I went out of my way to make it very, very private and to be very, very secretive. And paparazzi showed up anyway. And then, of course, I get the messages from people saying, you know, who will never get to get married, Meredith. And I just have that thrown in my face constantly as if my life doesn't. doesn't matter because she lost hers.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And I think that that's because they're not capable of imagining me as a real human being.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I guess for me, for a long time, he was the boogeyman, right? Like he was the big scary man who was making decisions to ruin my life and I I was scared of him. I didn't understand him. I also was constantly asking myself, I think that the question that haunted me most that I was attempting to discover the answer to was why? Just simply why?
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Like, I've had I don't know how many panic attacks because I I was plagued by this not understanding why this thing had happened to me. And it wasn't, I knew that it wasn't an easy answer, right? Like it wasn't just an evil man sitting in his prosecutor's office, you know, Putting his fingers together like Mr. Burns and chuckling about how he was putting an innocent girl in prison.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
That was not what was happening. I knew that to be true. Or at least I assumed that to be true because I tend to think that most people are not psychopaths and I didn't think that he was a psychopath. And it didn't explain even why so many people believed him. And so there had to be something more to it. It had to be more complicated. But I couldn't figure it out.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Like I couldn't understand how this man looked. at a 20-year-old girl with no history of violence, no history of criminality, no motive to commit this crime, and said, that's the person who's responsible for sexual assault and murder. Like, that woman is responsible for a man's crime. And I couldn't wrap my head around it. I couldn't understand why this had happened to me.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And so I spent years thinking about it and trying to understand it until I realized that I could just freaking ask. I could just ask. You wrote him. I wrote him. And you know what? So many people advised me not to. Including your family. Including my family, including everyone in the Innocence Movement. They were all saying it's a waste of time. Prosecutors never apologize.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
They never realize that they were wrong. It's a waste of time. He's never going to admit fault. He's never going to... I think the thing that they were afraid of was that I was looking to this person for my well-being. I needed this person to be okay. And they didn't want me... Because there was a big chance that you wouldn't get it, right? I want to understand him.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I want to know who this man is. I know he's not really a boogeyman. So who is this man? But also, if he could only see who I really am, maybe he would realize that he was wrong. And if he realizes that he's wrong, maybe he'll tell other people that he was wrong, and then my life will be much better.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
The thing that I tried to do was imagine What Giuliano and I could agree on. Because that's his name, by the way. Yes, sorry. His name is Giuliano. Giuliano Mignini. But at the time he was Dr. Mignini. Dr. Mignini. And I reached out to him and I told him that I wanted to know him outside of this adversarial system where we were pitted against each other from the very beginning.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
And my step one was find common ground. What could he and I have in common? And at first, he was resistant. At first, he didn't know whether or not it was even legal for him to talk to me. He's still a working prosecutor, has no idea. It's unprecedented for a defendant to reach out to a prosecutor. And it wasn't until I did a very public talk in Italy acknowledging that he was someone who had
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
genuine, noble intentions in his prosecution of me, even if he was wrong, that he responded to me. And immediately, I think he was immediately just kind of shocked and impressed that I was willing to see him as a human being, which, I don't know, it just goes to show what kind of echo chamber that he was living in. Again, like he's lived his entire life
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
being fighting people and being very adversarial. And so someone approached him in this very non-adversarial way, someone like me who had every reason to hate him and to fear him. And he was moved by that and almost immediately moved. We ended up corresponding for two years about everything under the sun, the case, but also our lives.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
He has admitted that he could have been wrong. He has admitted to me that I am not the person that he thought he was prosecuting. That if someone were to ask him to prosecute this case again today, he would not because he knows that I am not capable of committing such a crime. But at the same time, he really maintains that at the time that he was trying the case,
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
He truly believed what he was prosecuting. He truly believed the story that he was spinning. And I believe him that he truly believed it.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Because I had never been brought to the brink of my own sanity like that before and never again to this day. I was questioned constantly. For hours and hours and hours into the night so that I was sleep deprived. Some of it was just what you would generally call bullying. Someone contradicts you. Someone talks over you. They yell at you. I got slapped.
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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
Like there was general just like abuse and overpowering that was happening.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I did not speak fluent Italian, no. I was very elementary level. I certainly could not defend myself under an interrogation. And I think part of the problem was also that I wasn't sure if they were mad at me or were not understanding me because I was not speaking fluent Italian or because they were in fact suspecting me. Like I... I could not interpret what was happening to me.
Fresh Air
Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?
I'd never even been in a situation where I had been in trouble before. I'd never had to sit down with a principal and talk about being in trouble. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. So I was very much in a very new experience in the immediacy of discovering that my roommate had been murdered. So I was in a state of shock already. And I'm in a room with authority figures who I'm relying on
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I've wondered that many times. One of the technologies that I write about in the book is the NIPT, which is a blood test of the pregnant person that can be done very early in pregnancy, as early as nine weeks. And there are now consumer versions of this test that are used to screen The blood for the potential appearance of certain genetic changes. And BWS is so rare.
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Having A Child In The Digital Age
It's found, I think, at this point in about one in 10,000 births. that it really wouldn't make sense to test every person for it. But I remember asking a doctor, you know, could you do this really early in pregnancy? And she said, yeah, like technically you could. And I really fear...
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
thinking about who I was as this very scared, newly pregnant person who felt insufficient to the job of parenting, that I would be influenced to consider abortion. And Later in my pregnancy, I had an even scarier prenatal test that suggested that it was possible that the genetic abnormality in my child was catastrophic. And I was stealing myself for abortion at that point, too.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
It was not catastrophic. There was not a brain abnormality like I had feared. I was so grateful. that there were just a few places in the United States that I could have sought an abortion had I needed or wanted to. And so nothing about this experience has made me question my feeling that abortion should be available to any person who needs or wants it. in any context.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
But I do have this new understanding of the context in which these decisions are being made. And I think that context is really lacking. And so it's not the availability of abortion. It's not even the availability of some of these prenatal tests. Ultimately, I was really glad that my son was diagnosed before he was born because it meant that
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
his doctors could be waiting for him right when he came out. But I also understood only then that these choices are being made in a culture that highly stigmatizes disability and that expects women to sacrifice everything about themselves and their body in the pursuit of creating a a healthy, which I think is a euphemism for normal, child. And it's that context that I hope we can challenge.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah, I think there's a mode that these apps are working in, which is habituating people to having their bodies and their reproductive activities tracked in order to ostensibly
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
improve them in some way so as I was using flow you know not only did it present me this idealized cute able-bodied fetus it was feeding me information about what I ought to do the actions I should take the things that I should eat in order to ensure that I had this ideal pregnancy and
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
As soon as I had an abnormal ultrasound and my pregnancy was recategorized as high risk, I started searching for those terms within Flo's message boards. And they said, I'm sorry, please try searching for something else. And so I felt like even in this subtle way that the app was programmed, I was being told that like my pregnancy had no space in that community.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think so. I had books too. And, you know, the first difference I noticed is that I wasn't carrying this like big pregnancy book everywhere I went. But my phone was always there. And so even if I did not intend to bring my pregnancy app with me, it was there constantly. And so I found myself looking at it again and again. Also, a book is a set document.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
It covers a limited number of scenarios, and there's like a real limitation to that. But it also means that it can't be sort of like tweaked and engineered so that it serves you some seemingly new piece of information like every day or every few hours. I found myself looking at flow during my pregnancy like 10 times a day, even though I think this is so sick.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
But I was not looking to flow for actual advice or real information. I wasn't taking that information and changing my diet. or my movements, I think I was looking for reassurance that I was doing okay. And so even if I wasn't doing exactly what this app had said, I wasn't missing something major. And there was someone, it really felt like, along with me who was keeping track.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And so there became this real intimacy to our pseudo-relationship that I didn't have with, like, an informational pregnancy book.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
You know, I think after the particular circumstances of my pregnancy, I became really interested in prenatal testing and how it was advancing. And interested in the fact that it was so, it seemed like such an exciting category for all of the male tech leaders that we know so much about now.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And it was only through reading about them a little bit that I came to understand that this new ascendant technology that offers what they call polygenic analysis of embryos. So, you know, different outlets promise to find different characteristics, but they're offering everything from screening that predicts an increase in IQ points, that screens for hereditary cancers, all of this stuff.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
It's something that you can only use if you're going to go through IVF. And so after... paying for this embryo screening, which is a few thousand dollars, you're also choosing to go through in vitro fertilization, which is not only just a really difficult experience for many people, but extremely expensive and out of reach for most people.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
He told me that he saw something that he didn't like, and that phrase has really stuck with me. But what he saw was something that when I saw it, I thought was cute, which is that my son was sticking out his tongue. And that's abnormal if the baby is not just bringing the tongue back into the mouth. Although, of course, I didn't know that at the time.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And as I was reading one story about this, I was really struck by a woman who founded one of these companies who told one of her investors that instead of going through IVF herself, she should simply hire a surrogate and have her do it for her. And that to me really crystallized this idea of like a reproductive technology gap.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think the thing that worries me the most about these technologies is, again, there seems to be so much interest and investment in understanding technology. what certain children will be like and trying to prevent children with certain differences and very little investment in the care for those children, research that could help these children and adults.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And so I really found myself on both sides of this divide where I had access to what was at the time, you know, some advanced prenatal testing, but was also able to see After my child's birth that, you know, he was being born into a world that is not innovating in the space of accommodating disabilities in the way that it is innovating in the space of trying to prevent them.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think we are. I mean, I had this experience of during pregnancy, habituating myself to some external authority watching my pregnancy. And then after my child was born, I became the authority who was watching him and surveilling him. And I think there's this way that surveillance can become confused with care and attention and love.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I had this experience with my kids where I'd installed this fancy baby monitor that I was testing out for the book, and the video was uploaded to some cloud server so I could watch it from anywhere. I could watch them if they were taking a nap in their crib, but I was...
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
At the coffee shop down the street or whatever and somebody else was there with them and it could make it seem as if I were close to them because I would see my adorable children. and have this experience of being able to just watch them sleep peacefully, which is so different from the experience of dealing with them most of the time.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
But it wasn't until one night when the camera was set up and I laid down with my son in his bed and I sensed this presence in the corner of the room, these like four red glowing eyes,
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
After several weeks of tests, when I was about eight months pregnant, we learned that my son has Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which is an overgrowth disorder that, among other things, can cause a child to have a very enlarged tongue.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
She asked for it to be taken out when she was three years old or something and could articulate this because she didn't want the eye, as she called it, to be watching her in her bedroom.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I think, you know, so many times these technologies are purchased by parents before their kids are even born and they want to do what's right and they're scared, you know, and they want to make sure that they have everything they need like before the child arrives. We're not even giving ourselves a chance to really understand what it is we're getting and whether we actually need it.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah, I had this experience with my son where I heard about a robotic crib called the SNU. Before he was born, I got this secondhand version off of a parental listserv and set it up before he was born. So I was just sitting there waiting for him to come sleep in it. And the SNU promises that SNU babies tend to sleep one to two hours more Yes, right.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I spent such a long time, like, trying to troubleshoot the SNU to try to get it to work for my baby until eventually I found that I was really, like, troubleshooting my child. And he had become so entwined with the technology. that I really didn't know where the workings of the machine ended and where my son's sleep patterns began.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And so this technology that's often sold as a tool to help us better understand our kids and get data insights into them, in this case for me, it actually made it more difficult for me to understand what was going on with him and how he really wanted to sleep.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing that I don't want to think about is just that very soon my kids will have access to devices, whether it's at school or in our home, where they can just log on themselves and see what's out there. It's something that I'm just not prepared to deal with at the moment.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
There are like a couple of things that I was so grateful to have access to during my pregnancy that I hope will be helpful for my kids. And one was, you know, groups that are dedicated to the particular rare disorder that my son has where people who have the syndrome are or family members who are caretakers can come together and just talk about their experiences.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And just seeing the thousands of people who are members of these groups and seeing those numbers is so comforting to me because it reminds me that, like, my son is not alone. We were not alone with him. There is this whole community of people who... They look the same in some way. They experience some of the same social stigmas.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
They experience some of the same medical traumas and medical experiences. They just don't exist in a geographical community because the condition is too rare. So these groups are a real reminder for me that the Internet can be such a...
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
balm to communities of people who can't you know access each other offline and similarly like I think the disability justice community is such like a wonderful community that I hope that my son whether he ends up identifying as disabled or not has some access to and that is really helped by just the accommodation of being able to meet online and so
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think there are so many ways that my kids could find solace there. But I really think we're just so robbed of the ability to understand what good technology would look like because technology is not, for the very most part, being developed for the betterment of human beings. It's being developed to drive profits.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And so all of these like wonderful parts of online communities are embedded in that capitalist structure and they're held hostage by it. And so I really think to the extent, like, I don't think phones are the problem. I don't think the internet is the problem. I think these devices are indicative, unfortunately, of much larger problems. And it's really going to take
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
like the socialization of technology in order for us to really understand its potential as something that's positive for us and our children.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Sure. The errors I made during my pregnancy knocked at the door of my mind. I drank a glass and a half of wine on Mark's birthday before I knew I was pregnant. I swallowed a tablet of Ativan for acute anxiety after I knew. I took a long hot bath that crinkled my fingertips. I got sick with a fever and fell asleep without thinking about it. I waited until I was almost 35 years old to get pregnant.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I wanted to solve the question of myself before bringing another person into the world, but the answer had not come. Now my pregnancy was, in the language of obstetrics, geriatric. For seven months, we'd all acted like a baby was going to come out of my body like a rabbit yanked from a hat.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
The same body that ordered mozzarella sticks from the late-night menu and stared into a computer like it had a soul. The body that had, just a few years prior, snorted a key of cocaine supplied by the party bus driver hired to transport it to medieval times. This body was now working very seriously to generate a new human.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I had posed the body for Instagram, clutching my bump with two hands as if it might bounce away. I had bought a noise machine with a womb setting and thrown away the box. Now I lay on the table as the doctor stood in his chamber, rewinding the tape of my life. My phone sat on an empty chair, six feet away. Smothered beneath my smug maternity dress, it blinked silently with text messages from Mark.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
If I had the phone, I could hold it close to the exam table and Google my way out. I could pour my fears into its portal and process them into answers. I could consult the pregnant women who came before me, dust off their old message board posts, and read of long-ago ultrasounds that found weird ears and stuck-out tongues.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
They had dropped their baby's fates into the internet like coins into a fountain, and I would scrounge through them all, looking for the lucky penny. For the woman who returned to say, it turned out to be nothing. Trick of light.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah. You know, I started to think about writing a book about technology before I became pregnant, not sort of planning to focus it on this time in my life. And then instantly, once I became pregnant, my relationship with technology became so much more intense. And I really felt myself being influenced by what it was telling me.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I'm someone who, you know, I understand that reproduction is a normal event. But it really came as a shock to me when there was a person growing inside of me and I felt like I really didn't know what to do. And so I also, you know, early in my pregnancy didn't want to talk to any people about it. So I turned to the internet. I turned to apps. Later when my child was born, I turned to gadgets.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And it was only later that I really began to understand that these technologies work as narrative devices. And they were working in my life to tell me a certain story about my role as a parent and the expectations for my child.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I mean, I think I just assumed I did until much later when I started to feel as if it didn't really matter how it happened, that I had created my son and he was wonderful and and I was capable as his mother. But I carried that idea with me for such a long time.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think what was so clarifying about looking up the medical terminology was that hundreds of years ago there was this idea of the maternal imagination or the maternal impression, which is a pseudoscientific idea that a pregnant woman can see a monkey and
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Having A Child In The Digital Age
in the zoo and her child will come out with like ape-like traits or that she could see some kind of monstrous thing and that her child will come out to resemble a monster. And this was an explanation for birth defects. And I found that even though all of those ideas had been discredited, there was still this undercurrent of blame that was really palpable to me.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I even found that at a certain point after my pregnancy had been flagged as high risk and fetal abnormalities had been found in my son, It was me and my pregnancy that became the thing that people with normal pregnancies were advised to avoid. So I would read anti-anxiety books that said, you know, don't spend time thinking about pregnancy complications because they're quite rare.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
So I, you know, I too had anxiety and I also had pregnancy complications. And so I felt sort of like I had been brought along on this journey, this highly feminized journey that was supposed to like bring all pregnant women along and tell them what to do. And then, you know, suddenly I had been cast out and I had to sort of scurry over to a different part of the Internet.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah, that's true. There are certainly still pseudoscientific practitioners working, maybe more so this week than last week. I don't even know. But I did find someone who believes that things like cancer, even like the flu, COVID, are caused by internal conflicts.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And there was something about that, even though that's completely false and total nonsense, understanding that that was a cultural idea that this person was crystallizing and promoting really helped me to forgive myself. Because when you put it that way, like, it's completely ludicrous. I know that my son's... genetic condition was not caused by something I thought during pregnancy.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
But at the time, there was this sub-rational part of myself that really felt that that was true.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah, you know, I spent the beginning part of my pregnancy using an app called Flow. And Flow presents you with this CGI kind of fetus poppet that looks like a very cute pre-baby and is floating around in this like ethereal mist. And, again, it sounds so ludicrous, but when I was holding that in my hand, it felt on some emotional level like I was looking at my baby.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And then, you know, once doctors began to find some abnormalities on the actual medical portal to my body in the ultrasound, I realized that, of course, this image that Flo had promoted to me was a lie. It has no special insight into the baby inside of me, obviously.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I also came to understand that it promotes this idea to all of the hundreds of millions of people who use it during pregnancy that that is what their baby ought to look like. That is what they should expect their baby to look like. Um, and once I realized that wasn't the case, you know, I wanted to see images of people like my son. I wanted to understand what his life would be like.
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Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I wanted to understand what my life would be like as a caretaker for him. So I started like deep Googling Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome. And what I found was A lot of tabloid news of the weird reports about children born with extra large tongues. I found Reddit threads from people who were quite cruel about the very existence of these babies.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I found parents of children who had the condition who were asking for funds for medical care or presenting their children's lives, trying to raise awareness of it and look for acceptance. And I found the response to those people ranged from appreciation to disgust. And it was not until my son was born.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
I remember two minutes before my son was born, my doctor finally recommended that I have a C-section. And after like 24 hours of labor or something, I was ready for it. But I cried and I realized that I was crying because I was afraid. I was afraid to meet my son. And the minute I did, like, and he was a person finally who I had a real relationship with.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
all of these imagined images of him and potential lives for him dissolved. And it was really only at that moment that I realized how disability can be so divorced from its human context through these technologies and how I really needed to just meet this baby in order to put it back there.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
Thank you so much for having me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
He told me that he saw something that he didn't like, and that phrase has really stuck with me. But what he saw was something that when I saw it, I thought was cute, which is that my son was sticking out his tongue. And that's abnormal if the baby is not just bringing the tongue back into the mouth. Although, of course, I didn't know that at the time.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
After, you know, several weeks of tests when I was about eight months pregnant, we learned that my son has Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which is an overgrowth disorder that, among other things, can cause a child to have a very enlarged tongue.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
Sure. The errors I made during my pregnancy knocked at the door of my mind. I drank a glass and a half of wine on Mark's birthday before I knew I was pregnant. I swallowed a tablet of Ativan for acute anxiety after I knew. I took a long hot bath that crinkled my fingertips. I got sick with a fever and fell asleep without thinking about it. I waited until I was almost 35 years old to get pregnant.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
I wanted to solve the question of myself before bringing another person into the world. But the answer had not come. Now my pregnancy was, in the language of obstetrics, geriatric. For seven months, we'd all acted like a baby was going to come out of my body like a rabbit yanked from a hat.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
The same body that ordered mozzarella sticks from the late-night menu and stared into a computer like it had a soul. The body that had, just a few years prior, snorted a key of cocaine supplied by the party bus driver hired to transport it to medieval times. This body was now working very seriously to generate a new human.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
I had posed the body for Instagram, clutching my bump with two hands as if it might bounce away. I had bought a noise machine with a womb setting and thrown away the box. Now I lay on the table as the doctor stood in his chamber, rewinding the tape of my life. My phone sat on an empty chair, six feet away. Smothered beneath my smug maternity dress, it blinked silently with text messages from Mark.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
If I had the phone, I could hold it close to the exam table and Google my way out. I could pour my fears into its portal and process them into answers. I could consult the pregnant women who came before me, dust off their old message board posts, and read of long-ago ultrasounds that found weird ears and stuck-out tongues.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
They had dropped their babies' fates into the internet like coins into a fountain, and I would scrounge through them all, looking for the lucky penny. For the woman who returned to say, it turned out to be nothing. Trick of light.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah. You know, I started to think about writing a book about technology before I became pregnant, not sort of planning to focus it on this time in my life. And then instantly, once I became pregnant, my relationship with technology became so much more intense. And I really felt myself being influenced by what it was telling me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
I'm someone who, you know, I understand that reproduction is a normal event. But it really came as a shock to me when there was a person growing inside of me and I felt like I really didn't know what to do. And so I also, you know, early in my pregnancy didn't want to talk to any people about it. So I turned to the Internet. I turned to apps. Later, when my child was born, I turned to gadgets.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
And it was only later that I really began to understand that these technologies work as narrative devices. And they were working in my life to tell me a certain story about my role as a parent and the expectations for my childhood.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think so. I had books, too. And, you know, the first difference I noticed is that I wasn't carrying this, like, big pregnancy book everywhere I went. Right, right. But my phone was always there. And so even if I did not intend to bring my pregnancy app with me, it was there constantly. And so I found myself looking at it again and again.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think I was looking for reassurance that I was doing okay. And so even if I wasn't doing exactly what this app had said, I wasn't missing something major. And there was someone, it really felt like, along with me who was keeping track. And so there became this real intimacy between to our pseudo-relationship that I didn't have with, like, an informational pregnancy book.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
You know, I think after the particular circumstances of my pregnancy, I became really interested in prenatal testing and how it was advancing. And interested in the fact that it was so, it seemed like such an exciting category for all of the male tech leaders that we know so much about now.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
And it was only through reading about them a little bit that I came to understand that this new ascendant technology that offers what they call polygenic analysis of embryos So, you know, different outlets promise to find different characteristics, but they're offering everything from screening that predicts an increase in IQ points, that screens for hereditary cancers, all of this stuff.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
It's something that you can only use if you're going to go through IVF. And so after... paying for this embryo screening, which is a few thousand dollars, you're also choosing to go through in vitro fertilization, which is not only just a really difficult experience for many people, but extremely expensive and out of reach for most people.
Fresh Air
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And as I was reading one story about this, I was really struck by a woman who founded one of these companies who told one of her investors that instead of going through IVF herself, she should simply hire a surrogate and have her do it for her. And that to me really crystallized this idea of like a reproductive technology gap.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think the thing that worries me the most about these technologies is, again, there seems to be so much interest and investment in understanding the what certain children will be like and trying to prevent children with certain differences and very little investment in the care for those children, research that could help these children and adults.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
And so I really found myself on both sides of this divide where I had access to what was at the time, you know, some advanced prenatal testing, but was also able to see after my child's birth that, you know, who's being born into a world that is not innovating in the space of accommodating disabilities in the way that it is innovating in the space of trying to prevent them.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
I think we are. I mean, I had this experience of during pregnancy habituating myself to some external authority watching my pregnancy. And then after my child was born, I became the authority who was watching him and surveilling him. And I think there's this way that surveillance can become confused with care and attention and love.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I had this experience with my kids where I'd installed this fancy baby monitor that I was testing out for the book, and the video was uploaded to some cloud server so I could watch it from anywhere. I could watch them if they were taking a nap in their crib, but I was...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
At the coffee shop down the street or whatever and somebody else was there with them and it could make it seem as if I were close to them because I would see my adorable children. and have this experience of being able to just watch them sleep peacefully, which is so different from the experience of dealing with them most of the time.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
But it wasn't until one night when the camera was set up and I laid down with my son in his bed and I sensed this presence in the corner of the room, these like four red glowing eyes,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
She asked for it to be taken out when she was three years old or something and could articulate this because she didn't want the eye, as she called it, to be watching her in her bedroom.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I think, you know, so many times these technologies are purchased by parents before their kids are even born and they want to do what's right and they're scared, you know, and they want to make sure that they have everything they need like before the child arrives. We're not even giving ourselves a chance to really understand what it is we're getting and whether we actually need it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
Yeah, I had this experience with my son where I heard about a robotic crib called the SNU before he was born. I got this secondhand version off of a parental listserv and set it up before he was born. So I was just sitting there waiting for him to come sleep in it. And the SNU promises that SNU babies tend to sleep one to two hours more Right. Extra, right. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
And I spent such a long time like trying to troubleshoot the SNU to try to get it to work for my baby until eventually I found that I was really like troubleshooting my child. And he had become so entwined with the technology. That I really didn't know where the workings of the machine ended and where my son's, you know, sleep patterns began.
Fresh Air
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And so this technology that's often sold as a tool to help us better understand our kids and get like data insights into them. In this case for me, it actually made it more difficult for me to understand what was going on with him and like how he really wanted to sleep.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
So I ended up being the unofficial translator for everyone and every language. And then the other thing that became my sort of unofficial job was scribe. Everyone really thought that my handwriting was very beautiful. And when you are someone who is in prison, especially if you're feeling lonely and are looking for some attention from some family,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
a male counterpart, wherever he may be, you wanted to appear pretty to them. And the way that you could appear pretty is by having pretty handwriting.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
I would write their letters. Yeah, their little love letters. And sometimes they got a little frisky with the love letter. They would just dictate to me and I would write down. But sometimes they would say, but Amanda, you're better at saying this than us. Say this in like a really sexy way. And I was like, no, I'm just you. You dictate. I write. Right.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Yes, I'm so glad you brought it up because it is a very human thing to have a sexual identity, to have an intimate identity. And I was being vilified and punished for this perceived...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
sexuality and I and so I absolutely was in conflict with my own sexuality also like you bring up Raffaele and Raffaele what is a deeply romantic person at heart like we hit it off immediately in part because he was a nerd and I'm I love a good nerd but also because he was just so sweet and romantic with me from the get-go and even while we were you know surviving this insane
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
struggle together, he was ready to continue to pursue a romance with me, even while we were in prison and on trial. And I, because I was being so punished for my sexual identity, I resisted it. And I broke it off with him in prison because I, in part, I was feeling I was feeling like the reason I was even in there was because I was a sexually active young woman.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And then over the years, I first of all realized that my life might be spent, a great portion of it, inside these prison walls. And that an intimate life, a sexual life, was a part of being human. It wasn't something to be ashamed of. It wasn't something to repress. It was just one of the things that makes life worth living.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
That is one of the sort of unresolved, I should probably go to therapy for this kind of thing. I'm very claustrophobic. I've actually always been claustrophobic. So that ended up becoming even more aggravated in prison. And even when I came home and I found myself in my childhood bedroom, you know,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
In a way that I was in another prison cell because I could, you know, look out of my window when I was in prison. I couldn't even do that when I first came home because there were paparazzi standing outside, like right outside of my house, just pointing their cameras at my windows. And so we had to have all of the windows closed and like shuttered and draped.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I remember feeling really claustrophobic, like, oh, my God, oh, my God, I thought I was going to come out of prison. And now I'm feeling even more trapped. I can't leave my house. I can't leave my room. I can't open the windows. I can't, like, I was struggling with panic attacks.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Yeah, absolutely. I think all of my family was really, was fighting to get Amanda home again, right? Like they had given up so much of their lives and upended everything. Everything came about saving Amanda. And I think there was a level of disappointment when they realized that, yes, they had gotten Amanda out of prison, but they hadn't actually saved Amanda. Because...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
the girl who I was who had never had anything bad happen to her who trusted everyone and who was always optimistic and always you know that person died in Italy and she had to be grieved um and I don't think my family was ready for that I wasn't ready for that
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I think another thing that I had to realize, too, was that my family was also not the same after everything that had happened because they had gone through an experience that I did not have access to. And they were changed in ways that I didn't expect. And so there were some rough, rough periods there.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
I have a three-year-old daughter and a one-and-a-half-year-old son. Yeah, yeah. And he's a cutie. But Eureka is at that wonderful age where she wants to know everything and she wants to know why. And part of that has been, you know, my story. She wants to know about when mommy went to Italy. And I thought a lot about how I would talk to her about this story.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
But I've realized that, yes, I 100 percent believe in transparency and honesty. And I should always answer my daughter's questions with age appropriate honesty and not treat this story as like this weird taboo aspect of my life and our lives. But even more important than that, I think that children see what we do. more than they listen to what we say.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I feel really confident that I can show my daughter that stuff will happen to you that is painful and out of your control and inevitable, but it doesn't define you and you can find your way through it. All of us go through something. And I want her to see deep down that that that is not the end, and that is not all, and that, in fact, that is just the beginning.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I feel so confident that I can do that for her, and I can be there for her.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Thank you so much for having me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
I think because the record is so convoluted. I think that so many different stories arose around this case. And really, a product was delivered by the prosecution and the media that resonated with people, even though it wasn't based on anything and it wasn't true. And that product really was this idea that women hate other women.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
It really came down to that, this idea that young women secretly hate each other and are constantly competing with each other and in certain situations will sexually assault and murder each other. And it was a lie. And it's shocking to me that it wasn't seen for what it was at the time. But it was a story that resonated with people and I think continues to resonate with people.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I think that in a big way, it wasn't even about Meredith anymore. I think a lot of people really didn't care very much about her or the person who committed the crime. They cared about This idea of a young woman hating another woman enough to sexually assault and murder them. That was titillating and fascinating to people.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And that was ultimately the story that made the rounds of the world and resonated with so many people.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Oh, thank you for asking that. It's true that I didn't know Meredith very well. I had only known her for a few weeks. That said, when you study abroad, you get to know people really quickly because both of us were new arrivals to Perugia. We were both at the very same moment of our lives. I was 20. She was 21. She was studying journalism. I was studying languages.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And we both happened to rent a room in this beautiful little house overlooking the countryside. And it was perfect. It was that beautiful time of your life when everything is possible and you have every reason to expect to have beautiful experiences. And, you know, I feel so horrible about how she has been misrepresented in the media as well. Like the
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Yes, they had gotten Amanda out of prison, but they hadn't actually saved Amanda because the girl who I was, that person died in Italy.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
The image of Meredith that was presented by the prosecution was of this like uptight, judgmental, you know, English girl. And that was not at all who she was. She was, you know, sure, she was a little bit more introverted than me, but she was very kind and very silly. I remember thinking both that she was very sophisticated and elegant.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I think part of that was because she had a beautiful British accent and I always was impressed by that. But other than that, like she also kind of took care of me like she was always asking me if I was getting home safe or who I was going out with and just checking in on me and had this very big sisterly air there.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Like one thing that haunts me to this day is we found this really cool little vintage shop and she found this sparkly silver dress that she was very excited. She bought because she wanted to wear back home for New Year's Eve. And of course, she never got to wear that dress. And it just haunts me to this day. Like I was right there with her. She was so excited.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I don't even know what happened to it. You know, like so much of our lives, like in a big way, Two very young women went to Perugia and one of them didn't get to go home and one of them came home completely and utterly changed. And it's a grieving process for me for both of us.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Because I had never been brought to the brink of my own sanity like that before and never again to this day. I was questioned constantly. For hours and hours and hours into the night so that I was sleep deprived. Some of it was just what you would generally call bullying. Someone contradicts you. Someone talks over you. They yell at you. I got slapped.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Like there was general just like abuse and overpowering that was happening.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
I did not speak fluent Italian, no. I was very elementary level. I certainly could not defend myself under an interrogation. And I think part of the problem... was also that I wasn't sure if they were mad at me or were not understanding me because I was not speaking fluent Italian or because they were, in fact, suspecting me. Like, I could not interpret what was happening to me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
I'd never even been in a situation where I had been in trouble before. Like, I'd never had to sit down with a principal and talk about being in trouble. Like, nothing like that had ever happened to me. So I was very much... In a very new experience after in the immediacy of discovering that my roommate had been murdered. So I was in a state of shock already.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I'm in a room with authority figures who I'm relying on for my safety and who I'd been raised to trust and obey. And they are yelling at me. They are contradicting me. They're telling me that what I'm saying doesn't make any sense. They're telling me that I'm lying.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
But then on top of that, so these are all, you know, these bullying tactics are very effective at getting people to falsely confess. But on top of that, they lied to me. What was the biggest and most egregious lie? The biggest and most egregious lie was that they knew that I was present when the crime occurred. They knew. That's what they told you that—
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And that was incredibly destabilizing for me because that was not what I remembered. Like I was at my boyfriend's house the entire night. I kept insisting that can't be true, that can't be true. But they insisted that it was true and they knew for sure. And so the next lie on top of that was that because I was present and that I had witnessed this crime, I had trauma-induced amnesia.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
They insisted that my brain didn't remember the truth precisely because I had witnessed the crime and therefore was traumatized. And my brain had been making up an alternate reality that I thought I was remembering staying at my boyfriend's house when in fact I was at my house when the crime occurred. And you believed it. You started to believe that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
I started to believe it because after hours of insisting upon my innocence and that that wasn't true and that I wasn't lying, I started to question myself. Again, I was suggestible in that moment because there's only so long you can argue with authority figures before you, at least for me, I started to question myself. It's classic gaslighting.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
After my conviction, I really settled into this idea that this was my world. It was a very small world. It was very contained. It was very controlled. And it was populated by all of these women who believed by comparison to me, were very unlucky. They were abused, they were neglected, they were impoverished. I think I was the only person there who had all of my teeth.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
The level of need and poverty that I encountered in that environment stunned me. I did not know that there were people who could not read an analog clock. or that didn't know that the earth was a sphere. And these were the people that were my community. And I was also the famous one. I was the one who was getting constant letters.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
So many of these women were just forgotten by everyone, including their own families. And So I looked at them and I thought, God, I am so lucky. And one way, you know, a very important way to survive prison is to be useful because it's an environment where there's a lot of need and not a lot of resources.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I realized very quickly that I was, especially after a year in prison, and by that time I was fluent in Italian, I was able to function effectively. as a translator. So lots of the women that were imprisoned were not Italian, were not fluent in Italian, had no idea what anyone was telling them. Where were they coming from?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
A lot of people from various African nations, also Eastern Europe. But, you know, there was a couple of Chinese women that were in there at one point and I was translating for them by like taking I just happened to have this English to Chinese dictionary because I'm a language nerd there because there were no translators. There were no translators in the prison.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
“I’m The Party” (w/ Amy Poehler)
I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
“I’m The Party” (w/ Amy Poehler)
This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tick tock goes the Doomsday Clock
I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now. Now.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tick tock goes the Doomsday Clock
This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Cake: So Great. So, So Great
I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Cake: So Great. So, So Great
This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Cake: So Great. So, So Great
I have all of this psychological baggage that I'm carrying with me, and the last thing I want to do is to pass that on to my daughter. So I have to figure this out. This puzzle of my trauma, I have to figure it out, and I have to figure it out now.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Cake: So Great. So, So Great
This is not about him. This is about me and what I am capable of giving. And I know that I am capable of being kind to this man. And by God, I am going to do it and no one can stop me.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
They fall into the trap of confirmation bias, seeking out evidence that confirms their hunch and ignoring evidence that doesn't. They get tunnel vision. They fool themselves into thinking they're delivering justice when they're creating yet more injustice.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Even when police and prosecutors commit willful misconduct, which is far too common, withholding exculpatory evidence, contaminating witness testimony, even planting evidence, I don't imagine they are cackling like cartoon villains.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Rather, I believe they commit these acts of misconduct because they've convinced themselves that they've got the right suspect and they just need to put them away, even if that means breaking a few rules. But those rules are there for a reason, because when they are broken, the chances of a wrongful conviction goes up immensely and the costs are widespread and devastating.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
It's not up to me or any of our team here to determine how these three families have suffered and how that injustice should be rectified. You have Ken Lawson and the Hawaii Innocence Project Legal Avengers committed to that. Our job here as storytellers and advocates is to make noise, educate, raise awareness and give back. None of us should walk away from this series the same way we walked in.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
It seems like Hawaii County's goal is to delay Ian and Sean's civil case, which would finally accomplish what they have now spent years trying to prove, factual innocence. And with that, they would receive compensation from the state that they rightfully deserve.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
While you've got your earbuds in, while you fold laundry or cook dinner or drive to work as this podcast plays, know that there are tens of thousands of innocent people, perhaps more than 100,000, trapped in prison, wishing they had the opportunity to perform those daily chores. to work for an annoying boss, or to see that ex-lover at a party across the room.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
That's what I found myself missing most in prison. The birthdays, the adventures, the joy of family time during the holidays. I missed those too, obviously. But the longer I was inside, the more it was the daily stuff of a regular life, those unremarkable and even awkward moments that I began to yearn for.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
And it's not just those innocents locked inside, but their families on the outside, whose lives get consumed fighting to save them. As you've seen throughout the last 10 chapters, Dana Ireland's death impacted so many people. Dana's parents, Louise and John, spent the last years of their lives with the pain of the death of their daughter.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
and three men. There's Frank Pauline Jr. and his family, who is still trying to pick up the pieces, like his aunt Lori.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Judge Kubota says during the hearing, quote, these guys were convicted 23 years ago, and they're seeking a determination of actual innocence. And in my view, justice delayed at your behest is justice denied. I'm Amanda Knox, and this is Three. Chapter 10, Justice.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
But by the end of this series, there came a fourth family that at this stage may be a little harder to empathize with. And that's Albert Laurel Jr. 's family. His wife and kids and family members? Perhaps they had no clue that their husband, their dad, their uncle or cousin or son was responsible for something so unimaginable. And what must it be like to grapple with that revelation now?
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Or, equally as terrifying, perhaps some of them knew or suspected. We may never know or fully understand until they decide, if they decide, to speak for themselves. Regardless, Albert Laurel Jr. 's crime will have an effect on them, and they will bear his infamy in part simply by sharing his name. I know my family did.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
But we should also be mindful of the presumption of innocence, that there are many legitimate reasons they may not want to talk. And even Albert Laurel Jr., if he were alive today, would deserve to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Though it still remains troubling that the Hawaii PD has taken such pains to grant that presumption of innocence for him, even in his death, when they were so cavalier about going after Ian and Sean with nothing but a wild tale from an unreliable narrator. Steve Kramer and Steve Bush agree.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
When Shannon Kagawa stands in front of the Hawaii Supreme Court, she makes it clear that Ian and Sean Schweitzer are still considered suspects. While she believes the new DNA evidence is enough to justify overturning Ian and Sean's convictions, it doesn't necessarily mean they are innocent for all the reasons she has stated previously.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
We came into this case asking ourselves, who killed Dana Ireland? Because from everything we've seen and studied and analyzed, we can say without a shadow of a doubt that there's no reliable evidence tying Frank Pauline Jr., Sean Schweitzer, and Albert Ian Schweitzer to the crime. And we now have very solid evidence implicating a man who just took his own life when he learned he was a suspect.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
And this is terrifying for Ian and Sean, because even though their convictions have been overturned, until they are proven factually innocent, at any time, they can be charged again. The prosecution claims that is not part of their current game plan, but they haven't exactly earned a reputation for forthrightness and honesty here.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
No one forced the police or prosecutors to take on those roles. But when they did, they became responsible for protecting their community, for acting ethically, for delivering justice and not impeding it, for serving the truth. Those are heavy responsibilities. People's lives are at stake, and we should rightly honor the people who uphold them with integrity.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
But with big responsibility comes big accountability. And when our public servants fail us all, as they failed the Ireland family, the Paulines, and the Schweitzers, something needs to be done to balance the scales. Until that day, Sean and Ian are taking each day as it comes. Not exactly sure what's next.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
One of the things I really hope to convey to you in this series is that the story never ends at what I call the hamburger moment. They finally test the DNA. They find the real killer. The innocent man walks out of prison and takes his first bite of a burger, then curtains. That's how the local news so often plays it, as if the struggle for justice is finally over.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
But actual wrongful convictions are messy, both procedurally and psychologically. Too often, prosecutors are an obstacle not just to release, but to declarations of factual innocence and compensation. And even if those things happen, having your reputation smeared as a monstrous killer can never be totally undone. I'm living with these consequences today.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
By the time you hear this podcast, my own legal nightmare will hopefully finally be over after 18 years of trials. Yes, the trials have not stopped. It's more complicated than you know. But even if I'm finally, fully vindicated, I'm unlikely to ever see compensation for my wrongful imprisonment. And the stigma of accusation hangs over me.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
And during this hearing with the Hawaii Supreme Court, the higher judges are a little skeptical.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Whether the Italian justice system considers me a criminal or a victim, I know there are millions of people out there who will never be convinced of my innocence. If you're curious how I continue to process all that, you can follow my podcast, Labyrinths, check out my new book, Free, which comes out on March 25th, and find me at amandanox.com. All of that is linked in the show notes.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
For Ian and Sean, the same stigma remains as their legal battle for compensation continues. And it's so much harder to rebuild your life when over two decades were stolen from you. So I urge you to support Ian. He and his family have set up a GoFundMe that we're going to link to in the show notes for anyone who is interested in donating.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Additionally, you can support the incredible work the Hawaii Innocence Project does each day, which aside from working on Ian and Sean's case, has exonerated four other innocent people and has many more active cases. This work is expensive. For an average client, access to police reports and court records can cost upwards of $1,200.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
Visiting their clients in Arizona, where most are incarcerated, costs over $1,000 in travel expenses. Expert consulting often runs around $2,400 per expert per evidentiary hearing. And that testimony is crucial to debunk things like tire tread marks, bite marks, and other junk science. DNA testing is more expensive still, costing upwards of $2,500 per item to be tested in a lab.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
And it's not uncommon for there to be dozens of items worth testing. And that's not to mention any of the time for the attorneys working tirelessly on these cases. And it often takes years and years to overturn a wrongful conviction while the costs keep piling up. you can visit www.hawaiiinnocenceproject.org and click the Donate button to support them, their work, and their clients.
THREE
Justice | Chapter 10
They want to take this issue all the way up to Hawaii's Supreme Court with the goal of blocking the judge from sharing anything about their investigation into the murder of Dana Ireland.
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Justice | Chapter 10
And lastly, if you have any information about the abduction and murder of Dana Ireland, we encourage you to contact the Hawaii Innocence Project at contacthip at hawaiiinnocenceproject.org. You can also contact Crime Stoppers at 808-961-8300 and the Hawaii Police Department at 808-961-2380 or visit their website hawaiipolice.gov to submit a tip. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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Justice | Chapter 10
At the end of the day, the Hawaii Innocence Project is committed to one thing here, proving once and for all, beyond a reasonable doubt, that their clients Ian and Sean Schweitzer are innocent and that they are compensated accordingly. As for the Hawaii Police Department, well, in our conversation with Chief Moskowitz, he says the one thing they're committed to is justice. Of course.
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Justice | Chapter 10
And any argument that there is some witch hunt and cover-up happening is absolutely, categorically false.
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Justice | Chapter 10
Judge Kubota's decision to have Hawaii PD release the information they have about Albert Laurel Jr. is a polarizing one. This is great news for the Hawaii Innocence Project and for Ian and Sean, Hawaii PD, however, aren't exactly thrilled that Judge Kubota has made this decision.
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Justice | Chapter 10
Now, I want to clarify that it does make sense for law enforcement to keep the details of an ongoing investigation private when there is the possibility that disclosing that information could either spook a suspect into fleeing or hamper their ability to gather further evidence or create a media spectacle that could impact a jury pool. But Albert Laurel Jr.
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Justice | Chapter 10
According to an article reported by Lynn Kawano for Hawaii News Now, the reason that the prosecutor's office is requesting this information remain private is because, quote, "...any premature disclosure of these records would absolutely jeopardize and or completely upend this investigation."
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Justice | Chapter 10
is now dead, despite every effort the Hawaii PD says they took to prevent that outcome. He can't flee the country or hide underground to avoid an arrest or conviction. So what exactly are they investigating?
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Justice | Chapter 10
And if they can't provide a convincing answer to that question, it's hard not to wonder if they're just throwing out that line, ongoing investigation, to avoid sharing information that may simply make them look bad. For Ian and Sean and their family, it's hard not to become a bit jaded. The same thing happened with my family. Can you blame them?
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Justice | Chapter 10
After the police abused me, they witnessed the prosecution present baseless theories, trot out incentivized informants and junk science, all while the sole and actual killer was already in custody. And while the incompetence of law enforcement can make you frustrated at the system, the signs of corruption and misconduct make you scream in your head.
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Justice | Chapter 10
My own prosecutor was actually on trial for abuse of office in a separate case while he was prosecuting me. And it later emerged that the real killer had been mysteriously released from police custody just five days before he murdered my roommate, leading many to speculate that he was actually a criminal informant. As crazy as that all sounds, it's unfortunately not rare.
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Justice | Chapter 10
They say that they aren't necessarily against the Hawaii Innocence Project having the information, but they want to make it so they aren't able to share any of the information publicly, which is why they're appealing to the Hawaii Supreme Court.
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Justice | Chapter 10
During our team's last trip to Hawaii, Ian and Sean welcome us back to their home in Volcano a few days after the hearing. Sean's wife, Treatie, greets us with a warm smile, grandkids running between rooms. The day feels different. The delays and the lack of resounding good news that will put this all to bed finally has taken their toll on the brothers. Their mood is more somber than usual.
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Justice | Chapter 10
Sean, normally the more reserved of the two brothers, is worried about finances. He carries a heavy burden supporting his growing family, including newer grandkids, and he must balance these constant court appearances with the need to have take-home money each week. Ian is still steadfast. He's ready to fight. But he can't go back to work. He's not ready for that.
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Justice | Chapter 10
He was a nurse on the islands before all this happened, with dreams of early retirement. He's worked since he was a little boy, always hustling. But today is about trying to get back to normal. Each new day is a blessing to Ian, a new chance at life. Ian often recalls what Judge Peter Kubota shared with him that day, that he has more of his life to live.
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Justice | Chapter 10
Ian must decide if he will live with bitterness or with hope. I think about that too whenever I'm looking into a wrongful conviction case. Hope is complicated. It can be a source of suffering, the thing that prevents you from accepting your reality as it is. But it can also sustain you through the darkness.
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Justice | Chapter 10
And it's not just the personal hope of finding peace or growing through your trauma, but hope for the truth to finally come out, for justice to be served. And truth and justice, they're for everyone. Not just the Schweitzer family. Dana Ireland's family deserves the truth. So does the Pauline family. So does the whole Big Island community.
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Justice | Chapter 10
Justice also means that those who've caused harm or delayed the truth from coming out should be held accountable, especially when they've been empowered to protect and serve the community. And that's something that even the Hawaii Supreme Court recognizes when they come back with their decision in October 2024.
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Justice | Chapter 10
Because not only does Judge Kubota decide that Hawaii PD needs to turn over the evidence, but he also doesn't believe the Hawaii Innocence Project needs to keep whatever information they get private. The public deserves the visibility.
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Justice | Chapter 10
When the Supreme Court delivers their decision, they acknowledge, quote, significant procedural missteps, end quote. But in the same breath, they also share that the Hawaii Police Department does not need to release the records regarding Albert Laurel Jr. to the Hawaii Innocence Project, which can sound a little like a loss here. But thankfully, it's actually not.
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Justice | Chapter 10
The high court says that Ian and Sean no longer need to prove actual innocence in order to move forward with their compensation claims. They rule that a change needs to be made regarding the Schweitzer's petition. Their petition needs to be changed to a civil lawsuit, and the Hawaii Supreme Court will handle the proceedings.
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Justice | Chapter 10
As of the time of this hearing, police say they are waiting for the results of Albert Laurel Jr. 's autopsy and are still in the process of trying to interview his loved ones, including his wife, who they say hasn't spoken to them yet, almost four months after his death.
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Justice | Chapter 10
And as of today, this is where things sit, with the Hawaii Innocence Project in the midst of filing their civil lawsuit against Hawaii County. This series has been about a lot of things. Justice for Dana Ireland and her family. Justice for Sean and Ian Schweitzer and their family. And as complicated as it may be, justice for Frank Pauline and his family.
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Justice | Chapter 10
Whatever you may think about Frank, it became a lot harder to carry around the name Pauline in Hawaii after Ian, Sean, and Frank were wrongly convicted for the murder of Dana Ireland. And that's not just due to Frank's lies, but to the incompetence and perhaps willful blindness of law enforcement. Here's his attorney, Miles Briner.
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Justice | Chapter 10
During his hearing, Judge Kubota questioned Elizabeth Britt Bailey, who is the Deputy Corporation Counsel of Hawaii County, wanting to better understand exactly what is going on behind the scenes with the Hawaii PD. What is their goal? Albert Laurel Jr. is dead. What possible ongoing investigation is there?
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Justice | Chapter 10
The question that rings throughout every case where there is a potential wrongful conviction at the center of it is, how can something like this happen? How can authorities get it so wrong? In Ian and Sean's case, there was fortunately DNA, but in many cases, there isn't.
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Justice | Chapter 10
I know innocent people who are still rotting away in prison because there's no DNA to prove their innocence, and their convictions rest on something like a false confession. I truly believe that most wrongful convictions occur because police and prosecutors are human. They are subject to the same cognitive biases that afflict us all.
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Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer
Christmas Eve, 1991. On Hawaii's Big Island, 23-year-old Dana Ireland went for a bike ride and never came home. Hours later, she was found brutally injured in a remote area, her life slipping away with every minute that passed. And by 12.07 a.m., in the early hours of Christmas morning, Dana was gone. Her death shook the community of Vacationland, Hawaii, and the entire Big Island to its core.
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Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer
Behind every wrongful conviction lies a deeper, more disturbing truth about how something like this could happen to you or someone you love.
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Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer
In this season of Three, you're going to hear about how three men became tied up in one of Hawaii's most notorious murders and the impact it had on three families. The Paulines.
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Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer
This is 3, Season 2, Murder in Vacationland. The story of Dana Ireland, Albert Ian Schweitzer, Sean Schweitzer, and Frank Pauline Jr. And the shocking events that turned this entire case and our series upside down.
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Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer
Coming Thursday, March 13th. Follow 3 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer
And the police needed to get answers, quickly, no matter how they got them.
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Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer
I'm Amanda Knox. I know what it's like to be trapped in the nightmare of being wrongly accused and the years it takes to vindicate yourself in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of an unforgiving media, and a judgmental public.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
After over three weeks, somehow, someway, Ian is found guilty of sexual assault in the first, guilty of murder in the second, and guilty of kidnapping. He is sentenced to life in prison for the murder conviction and two 20-year sentences for kidnapping and sexual assault to run consecutively. Sean is up next.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The process is full of hurdles, with a limited timeline and number of chances to argue innocence. Post-conviction appeals efforts are constrained by strict rules. Only issues raised during the trial can be addressed. No new evidence or witnesses can be introduced.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
But the game changer comes with new evidence, stuff like new witnesses, new documents, or new scientific evidence like DNA testing that wasn't known or available at the time of trial. The goal isn't just to prove innocence, but also to identify the real perpetrator.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Back in 2008, the Department of Justice launched a program that allowed DNA samples to be tested using newer methods. It was then that the attorneys for the Hawaii Innocence Project leveraged that statute to request DNA retesting under seal due to the high-profile nature of the case.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Keeping testing secret avoided drawing attention while other evidence was explored, all in the hopes of finding the real perpetrator. DNA testing since 2008 has substantially changed.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The Jimmy Zee T-shirt found next to Dana Ireland, one key piece of evidence, could never fully be reviewed because forensic technology was unable to separate other DNA since the shirt was substantially soaked in Dana's blood. The prosecution argued the T-shirt belonged to Frank Pauline, supported by multiple witness testimonies claiming to have seen him wearing it.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
At the same time, it was a popular surf shirt like billabong, and a lot of islanders had one. Regardless, this had stuck with the jury at Frank's trial. It was his shirt, they thought, and Dana's blood. So he must have done it.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
I can't tell you how common and frustrating this attitude is as a wrongly convicted person. But it's human nature to believe that where there's smoke, there's fire. The problem is, in wrongful conviction cases, it's all smoke and no fire. But the more pressure there is from the media and the public to hold someone accountable, the more smoke there is.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
In April of 2015, the Hawaii Innocence Project publicly announced their investigation into Ian's case. And that sent it moving forward like a freight train. Well, in the legal world, that is. In the normal human world, their investigation would take years.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
They spent hours and hours poring over the case file, re-examining evidence, questioning witnesses and visiting the scene which had changed a lot since 1991. Directly west of vacation land is Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, only 40 miles away by car, and even less as the crow flies.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The legendary active volcano is not far from the Schweitzer House and just a short hop to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. I was actually visiting that park, watching the volcano erupt, when I got the news that Ian was being released from prison.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
In 2018, it caused chaos. This was a problem for Ken, Randy, and the Hawaii Innocence Project. Most places in the U.S., crime scenes don't just vanish overnight.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
By 2015, Ian has been in prison for about 15 years. But with the muscle he has on his defense team now, he is staying hopeful while his team works on a joint stipulation document that they will spend the next few years refining. And it's really just a document where all parties, in this case, Ian's defense team and the then-mayor Mitch Roth, agree on what they call, quote, "'undisputed facts.'"
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
And it serves as a legal shortcut where both sides agree on certain facts relevant to the case so they can just focus on what they disagree on. And as we've seen so far, there are quite a few disagreements, especially when it comes to the DNA. So the joint investigative teams hire a neutral DNA expert by the name of Lisa Calandro to help perform new testing on two items.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The vaginal swabs collected from Dana's body and the hospital gurney sheet where semen was detected. It would take three years after entering into the joint investigation for the new DNA results to come in. And when they do, everyone is shocked. None of the DNA matches Frank Pauline Jr., Ian Schweitzer, or Sean Schweitzer. That's great news. And even better, there's a lead.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
For all the samples are consistent with each other in revealing a single DNA profile. This profile is labeled unknown male number one.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Finally, in January of 2022, the Hawaii County Prosecutor's Office, together with the Hawaii Innocence Project and New York Innocence Project, file their joint stipulated facts, claiming their reinvestigation has led to the discovery of new evidence that was not presented to the jury in Ian's 2000 trial.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
But it still takes months until October 2022 for Sean Schweitzer and his attorney, Keith Shigatomi, to meet with Hawaii County prosecuting attorneys Shannon Kagawa and Kevin Hashizaki to discuss the polygraph test he took as part of his plea agreement. During this meeting, Sean recants his prior confession in full. And despite how unreliable the polygraph is, law enforcement still relies on it.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
So naturally, they decide to give Sean another, and there is zero detection of deception. So the defense team is ready and armed with their new strategy, using a wealth of evidence to prove the existence of this elusive figure, unknown male number one. Of course, Ian is aware of all that is going on. But as you heard in chapter one, what came next was a surprise to everyone.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
In January 2023, nearly 23 years after serving time in Arizona, Ian is flown back to Hawaii.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
And Ian's family and his entire legal team, including Jennifer Brown, are anxious for their day in court.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
During Ian's January 2023 hearing, his legal team invites experts to testify and walk the judge through all the forensic evidence used to convict the three men. Starting with the DNA evidence recovered from the hospital bedsheet and from the armpit of the Jimmy Zee T-shirt, which excluded Ian Schweitzer, Sean Schweitzer and Frank Pauline Jr.,
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
This DNA was consistent with samples taken from the vaginal swabs and from Dana's underwear, all of which pointed to a single person identified as unknown male number one.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Like Ian, Sean is offered a deal. But unlike Ian, for the sake of his children's well-being, Sean accepts, with Ian's support.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The investigation had pinned Ian's 1957 Volkswagen Beetle as the vehicle that hit Dana, Ireland. But the tire tracks from the bike accident scene and the Wa'awa'a Trail revealed inconsistencies in the tread patterns. They didn't match the VW. The experts go on to debunk the tread marks.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Using the manufacturer's specs of the 1953 model, they point out significant differences in the Beetle's tread width, track width, and the wheelbase measurements compared to what police recorded at the scenes. They were closer to the markings of a small pickup truck. The VW Beetle would have to have been a highly modified stretch version of the model that Ian had driven.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Next is the bite mark evidence. A forensic odontology expert looks into the bite marks and explains during the hearing how teeth and skin change over time, making it difficult to link bite marks to individuals. The expert also criticizes the original doctor's conclusions and believes that the marks were not, in fact, bite marks at all.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Ultimately, Ian, Sean, and Frank are conclusively excluded as contributors to the DNA evidence. The use of the VW in the murder is debunked, and the bite mark analysis is dismissed as junk science. Each piece of the puzzle the defense presents points to one conclusion, a single culprit who remains unidentified.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
In other words, three innocent men were convicted of crimes they did not commit while the real perpetrator was living out his glory days.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Now, this particular hearing is not to prove Ian's innocence, only to demonstrate that there is crucial evidence that ultimately was not presented at his initial trial. But on January 24th, 2023, Ian's conviction is vacated and the charges against him are dismissed. He's formally exonerated now.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Local investigative journalist Lynn Kawano, who has spent years working on and covering this case, was in the courtroom that day and heard all of this firsthand.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
This is an underappreciated aspect of wrongful convictions. Many innocent people plead guilty because they can see that they won't get a fair shake from the courts. They're not wrong. And you can see how Sean's choice here to plead to something he didn't do is quite rational.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Sean's plea agreement charges him with manslaughter and kidnapping by omission, asserting he failed to prevent the events from occurring rather than admitting his active participation in them. But the plea deal has a contingency. Accepting the plea deal not only requires a recorded confession, but also passing a polygraph test, implicating his brother in the process.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
As Ian and Frank have both now been convicted of Dana's murder, Sean's fate seems almost predestined. Freedom often comes at a steep cost. For Sean, the idea of pleading guilty to a crime he didn't commit is a bitter pill to swallow. And his attorney, Keith Shigatomi, is committed to doing whatever he can to help Sean.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Sean takes the polygraph, and initially, the test detects deception. And no matter how hard he tries, Sean's confession is proving to be false. But instead of viewing these results as an indication of potential innocence, the prosecution decides to salvage their situation.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The consensus around Sean's polygraph results is that they are inconclusive, a conclusion Detective Guillermo accepts with no objections. Until they arrive in court, and Judge Ricky May Amano presses for clear answers.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
But by 2000, the case is closed, despite no evidence pointing towards the three men. In the court of law, Frank and Ian are guilty of Dana Ireland's murder and will spend the rest of their lives behind bars. The prison Sean has to spend his time in after accepting the plea deal is a bit more invisible.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
With his plea deal settled, Sean focuses on caring for his twin daughters, who, unlike other kids at school, have to navigate an adult situation in a middle school setting. In one of their eighth-grade assignments, their teacher chose Murder in Paradise for a book report.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Written by a reporter from the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, the book detailed Dana Ireland's murder, the ensuing investigation, and the complicated legal battle. As part of the assignment, one of the twins was asked to read the book aloud in class, putting a spotlight on the girls and their family's situation. Despite their efforts to confront the bullying, one daughter found herself suspended.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
This is another underappreciated aspect of wrongful convictions, the ripple effect on families. While I was on trial, my own sisters were going through a similar nightmare, being harassed in school, getting into fights to defend my honor. All the while, I was stuck in a cell, and they weren't telling me about the trauma they were going through because they didn't want to burden me further."
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
For Ian, every day in prison blurred into the next, a repetitive cycle that wore him down.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
The stifling sameness is one of the more mundane but maddening aspects of prison. You take for granted the variety that fills your life on the outside, trying out that new restaurant, bumping into your old friend from school, and then you're stuck with the same food, the same walls, the same people, day in, day out. Every inmate reacts to it differently.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
It made me depressed, and sadness became my new emotional baseline. For Ian, it triggered feelings of anger, but he fought to not let it consume him, recognizing its draining influence. He did his best to keep his spirits up and navigate his new reality.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
And it was only a matter of time before the Hawaii Innocence Project would set things into motion in a way that no one was able to before. Ken Lawson and Randy Roth, now co-directors of the Hawaii Innocence Project, start by making inroads with the prosecutor's office with their law students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Ken's next step was to present the case to the then mayor, Mitch Roth, to see if he would be willing to do a joint investigation.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
Ken Lawson and Randy Roth assemble the Marvel Avengers of defense teams. For it's not just them and their students, but they call in the help of Barry Sheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York, and Susan Friedman, the staff attorney for the Innocence Project, with a focus in post-conviction DNA cases.
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Inconclusive | Chapter 5
But even with this kind of legal lineup, exonerating someone and proving innocence is an uphill battle. Here's Jennifer Brown, current associate director of the Hawaii Innocence Project.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
The year 1995 has come to an end. And as far as the Ireland's are concerned, they're no closer to getting justice for their daughter. After the new year, John and Louise come back to the island with a petition containing thousands of signatures. So, police take action.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
It's to everyone's surprise that the judge grants the request and the charges against Ian and Sean are dropped. The brothers are free now. But in the court of public opinion, they are anything but.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
No way. But the door is still open for retrial if new evidence emerges. And emerge it does. For example, the bite mark analyst decides to change his initial findings, saying he can't exclude Frank, Ian, or Sean as the source of the bite mark.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Bite mark evidence is now thoroughly debunked as junk science. But back in 1998, it held sway with experts, with judges, and with juries. This twist with the bite mark evidence is a bad sign for Ian and Sean. But even so, their defense is not convinced that the prosecution can make a case out of it alone, given the clear lack of DNA and physical evidence tying the three to the murder.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
But one thing I've learned, in a high-profile homicide investigation, it's not just the freedom of the accused on the line, but also the reputations and egos of prosecutors and law enforcement. Nobody likes to be wrong, and especially not with so many people watching.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And so it's no surprise that with egg on their face after dropping the charges against the Schweitzer brothers, the prosecution was willing to find whatever scrap of evidence they could to prove they had been right all along. By May of 1999, Ian and Sean Schweitzer face a renewed indictment for kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
But the legal language this time includes the phrase, hinting at the involvement of Frank and a potential fourth person who Frank alluded to in the past. the inclusion of this detail in the indictment gives prosecutors flexibility when addressing the DNA discrepancy before the jury.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Even though it doesn't match any of the three men on trial, they can claim it belongs to this fourth mystery accomplice, and that the lack of a match doesn't prove the innocence of Frank, Ian, or Sean. Again, this is similar to what happened with my case. Though all the DNA evidence pointed to Rudy Gaudet, he was convicted in his own trial of committing the crime with others.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And that was used to implicate me and Raffaele and excuse the obvious absurdity that we'd somehow participated in a violent murder without leaving any traces of ourselves at the scene. But the bite mark isn't enough. The prosecution needs more. And they find what they're looking for in a man named Mike Ortiz.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Like many people at the center of this story, jailhouse informant Mike Ortiz is only several degrees of separation away from Sean and Ian Schweitzer, even though they've never met him. And Mike has plenty to gain from implicating the Schweitzer brothers, just like John Gonsalves and his family.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Gonsalves even writes a letter to the Ireland's about the reward money, sharing the financial, physical, and mental struggles he and his family have been through. To avoid being accused of acting in self-interest, he asks that the check be made out to his aunt. The Ireland's don't reply, but forward the letter to the prosecutor's office. but beyond the money, which he doesn't get, by the way.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Rumor inside the prison is that deals are being handed out left and right, and that this particular deal is the best deal out there.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
This scenario isn't just speculative. Incentivized informants, aka jailhouse snitches, are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. Advocates have repeatedly warned against offering incentives to informants since it creates enormous motivation for inmates like Mike Ortiz to give false testimony and evidence. Yet such incentivized testimony is relied upon in court to this day.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
While the brothers want nothing to do with the spotlight, Frank wants everyone to know his name and his story. But his story isn't what people are coming to believe. They think he's just as guilty as the Schweitzer brothers. So Frank decides to call up the one resource that always seems to listen, the media. It's time for him to clear some things up, but not just about his own involvement.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
With no physical evidence tying any of the men to Dana's murder and the DNA excluding them, Mike Ortiz could be the trigger the prosecution needs to push their case to trial. So investigators go speak with him.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
They speak with Mike in Minnesota, where he is being held for theft charges. This isn't the first time they have spoken with him, though. They got his initial statement over a phone call a few days earlier. Today's visit is to verify all that information one last time in person.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Three other inmates also come forward, all jailhouse informants and all anxious to cut their own deals in exchange for information they claim to have. Information that can be easily conveyed to them because Dana's case is widely known inside and outside the prison walls by this point. After investigators talk with Mike and these other informants, it's official.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
The case against Sean Schweitzer, Ian Schweitzer, and Frank Pauline Jr. will move forward. For the second time. And oh, that line from the investigator, have I promised you anything in exchange for this information? Well, actions speak louder than words.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
After their renewed indictment, the Schweitzer brothers are sent back to jail. Technically, together.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
By July 1999, several politicians' offices in both Hawaii and Washington, D.C. have become accustomed to the flood of letters from John and Louise Ireland, who remain committed to getting justice for their daughter. The pressure is everywhere, and things are now at a boiling point as Frank Pauline Jr. 's trial begins on July 21st.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Prosecutor Charlene Eboshi lays out the gruesome details of what they believed happened that day.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Sitting at the defense table, observers note a marked change in Frank Pauline's appearance. Gone is the tough guy facade. In its place, Frank exudes warmth and looks just like another guy in glasses and a button-up shirt, his tattoos barely visible above his collar. The defense, led by Cliff Hunt, leans on two key points as their arguments. That Frank's confessions to police were false.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And that the physical evidence, mainly the DNA, does not support any of the three men being part of this.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
In a case fraught with complexity and emotion, and with local and international pressure for a conviction, conflicting expert testimonies further muddy the waters, leaving the jury tasked with unraveling the tangled web of evidence.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Dana's family are called to testify early in the trial, offering emotional testimony about Dana and the events that happened back on Christmas Eve 1991. As Sandy's voice chokes up, one of the jurors wipes away tears from her eyes.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Ida Smith, who says she found Dana at the fishing trail, is also emotional in her testimony.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
The lineup of witnesses includes three different prison inmates, all with a story to tell about how Frank had run his mouth in prison, telling them about his involvement in Dana's murder. Shannon Thumper Rodriguez was serving two life sentences for a double murder, and Jeffrey Alfonso was in on a drug conviction, and Shane Kobayashi on sexual assault.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Kobayashi's sentence of up to 15 years was reduced to three. The same day, members of the Pauline family testify. Frank's girlfriend, the mother of two of his children, Sharla Figueroa, takes the stand and shares that she and her grandmother heard Frank confess over a 1994 prison phone call.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
She goes on to recount the moment she saw damning evidence on television. A large shirt she had washed that she knew Frank wore and was bloody was now on the news linked to Ireland's death. Multiple witnesses would echo her realization. To some, like Cliff Hunt, the large shirt was obviously too small for Frank's stocky torso. Ken Lawson agrees.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
I'm Amanda Knox, and this is Three. Frank goes on to tell the reporter that it's true that he was there on Kapoho Kai Drive when Dana Ireland was murdered. But he wasn't there with the Schweitzer brothers. He was there by himself, smoking crack cocaine.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Under cross-examination, Sharla Figueroa says Pauline told her he did it to help his stepbrother, John Gonsalves. Finally, Frank Pauline decides to take the stand, still dressed in a nice shirt, tie, and glasses.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Frank admits, I am a liar on the stand. He says, I figured I could at least do that for my brother after all the stuff he done for me. Love is powerful, Cliff. That's all I can say. Love is powerful, man.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
In January 1996, they send the case to prosecutors, despite the fact that test results for Frank and the Schweitzer brothers and a few other potential suspects have failed to show any connection to Dana's murder. And by now, detectives are tired of Frank's countless changing stories. But they think he knows too many details to have made the whole thing up. But there's a problem for Frank.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
In a passing shot furthering the family drama of it all, Frank Pauline also says that he was planning to implicate his half-brother, Wayne Gonsalves, as the fourth participant in the killing, which of course lined up perfectly with what the police and prosecutors had been floating to.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Having done so many not-so-great things already in his young life, the possibility of Frank convincing the jury that this time he was a liar was a tall mountain to climb. He says on the stand, I may be dumb, but I didn't kill anybody.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And yet, jurors deliberate for roughly 14 hours, and despite DNA and bite mark evidence failing to tie Frank to the murder, they find Frank Pauline guilty of murder in the second degree, kidnapping, and sexual assault in the first degree. Jurors say his confession played a crucial role in his conviction.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Now, despite the fact Ian and Sean did not confess ahead of their trial, with Frank now convicted, things aren't looking too good for them. Ian's trial is next, but he and their family struggle to find the right defense attorneys.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
When investigators meet with Frank at Oahu Prison on July 6, 1996, after his public recantation, he gives investigators this new story and a new name. But here's the thing. I can walk you through each specific detail of each of Frank's stories. But that's all they are. Stories. Stories that, according to Ken Lawson of the Hawaii Innocence Project, Frank hoped he'd benefit from.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
One night, Frank Pauline even calls Dana's father, John Ireland, from prison to tell him, quote, I know who really killed your daughter.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And John tells investigators that this conversation ended with John telling Frank, quote, Around the same time, while Frank is serving a prison sentence for another crime, he is indicted for first-degree sexual assault against a minor under 14 years old back in 1993. And police are still receiving compelling tips that contradict the forensic results.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
A woman even tells them that Frank had once bitten her in the same location where the supposed bite mark was found on Dana. All in all, police are feeling pretty good about their chances with Frank. But the Ireland's? Not so much.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
A little more than five and a half years after the murder of Dana Ireland, on July 29, 1997, Frank Pauline is indicted and charged with second-degree murder, first-degree sexual assault, and kidnapping. But he's not the only one. A couple months later, on October 9th, 1997, Albert Ian Schweitzer and Sean Schweitzer are indicted on the same charges as Frank. All three of the men plead not guilty.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
While Frank has to wait it out in prison, Ian and Sean's parents do all they can to make bail, and part of the bail agreement is everyone is placed under a very strict gag order.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Though he expected to be treated as a witness after implicating the Schweitzer brothers, he eventually realizes that he's in potentially just as much trouble as they are. So he changes his tune.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
So they keep their mouths shut for the next six months as they prepare for their day in court. Ian and Sean's date is set for April 6th, 1998, while Frank is supposed to go on trial in January. But that gets delayed until July 1998. You may be wondering, why the separate trials? This happens more often than you might think, especially when the evidence implicating the suspects is thin.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
In my case, my boyfriend Raffaele and I were arrested early on after the police coerced me into signing statements which implicated myself, Raffaele, and my boss. I recanted those statements hours later, once the brutal police pressure was off. And when the forensic evidence came back two weeks later, it all pointed to a local burglar named Rudy Gade, not a trace of me, Raffaele, or my boss.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Gade even said at first that we weren't present at the crime scene. But instead of going after Gade alone, as they should have, the police doubled down on their initial mistake and charged all three of us with the crime. Godet then changed his story and pointed the blame at me and Raffaele.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
If they'd tried us all together, it would have been easy for my defense to show how all the evidence pointed to Godet as the sole killer. So instead, Godet was tried separately and was convicted in a fast-track trial with no opportunity for my defense to cross-examine him."
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Raffaele and I were then tried together, where prosecutors could take Godet's role as a judicial fact and build their case against us from there. Something similar happened with the Schweitzer brothers. By trying them separately from Frank, it would be harder for the Schweitzer's defense to cast doubt on Frank, the sole witness against them.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
And a potential failure to convict Frank wouldn't necessarily tank the prosecution's chances of convicting them. So the trial dates were set, and the prosecution began preparing its cases. Ian and Sean would have to prepare as well.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
That's Keith Shigatomi, who took over as Sean's counsel in March of 1998.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Then, in March, Sean and Ian's individual legal teams receive some shocking new information from the Hawaii district attorney. The defense team learns that DNA tests were done on the semen found on the vaginal swabs and on the hospital gurney that brought Dana Ireland into the ER. And neither Frank, Ian, nor Sean were a match.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
Throughout 1996, the Schweitzer brothers are trying their best to maintain a normal life. Not only have they been living the past year under a police microscope, but thanks to Frank's confession and his media tour frenzy, the public has their eyes on them too. And to the islanders, these men were bad news.
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The Prison Priest | Chapter 4
It's October of 1998, and Ian and Sean's trials are about to start when a dramatic ruling upends the entire case against the Schweitzer brothers.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
I arrived in Hawaii the day Ian Schweitzer was released from prison. I remember the first time I met other exonerees through the innocence network, and it changed my life. I suddenly realized I wasn't alone in going through an extraordinary injustice. These were people that I didn't have to explain myself to.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
He says he is often up at the crack of dawn to work out. Ian's a soft-spoken kind of guy, his voice warm and welcoming. Next to Ian is his younger brother, Sean. He's taller than Ian, with a goatee and long hair tied back. He's initially a little closed off. His arms are crossed at first, and he's quiet. But he eventually warms up and is every bit as kind and welcoming as Ian is.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Regardless of their whereabouts that day, the biggest mystery of all is how could Frank claim they were all in Ian's 57 VW Bug that day back in 1991, when Sean and Ian claim they didn't even own it until 1992?
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Ian and Sean's father tells investigators that the purchase wasn't made and the title wasn't transferred until sometime in February 1992.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
That should clear everything up, right? How could police believe Frank's story if it wasn't even possible for the Schweitzer brothers to be driving the VW that day? They even had the title paperwork to back it up. On top of that, the forensic results from the car didn't show any traces of blood or connection to Dana Ireland.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
It's moments like this where you'd think detectives would realize they were driving down the wrong path. But tunnel vision and confirmation bias sets in. Take my case, for example. I had an alibi, there was zero trace of me found in the room where my roommate Meredith was murdered, and my boyfriend Raffaele and I had no connection to the man whose DNA was all over the crime scene.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
But the investigation was biased by misinformation early on, and it led authorities to ignore these huge problems with their theory and press on regardless. That's just what detectives did with Ian and Sean Schweitzer. They felt they were close to a big break, and it blinded them. They weren't letting go.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Thanks to Frank Pauline's confession, detectives feel they can now confidently clear their original three suspects, Roy Santos, Anthony Torres, and Frank Nasario. But as far as new suspects go, they're trying to keep that close to their chest. They're continuing to dig deeper into Frank, Ian, and Sean.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
But despite the numerous rumors about them now swirling around the island, detectives aren't ready to release their findings. But Frank Pauline? He's tired of waiting. It's been about six months since his first interview with detectives, and he's starting to think they may be using him. It seems like he was expecting more in return for his confession. So, Frank goes to the media.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Frank's initial jailhouse interview starts a press tour for him. Each interview offers up something new, much of which he hasn't even shared with police.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Money? Oh, yeah. There is a $25,000 reward offered up in regards to Dana's case. And remember, Frank Pauline also has family members in jail and would love to see them released. Here's Ken Lawson again.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
As Frank's story is reverberating throughout Hawaii, Dana's family is devastated. And angry. With the world's eyes now on them, detectives are pushing to gather just enough evidence for an arrest. But they're not moving all that quickly.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
They spend the first half of 1995 continuing to interview anyone with information about the Pauline Gonsalves family and or the Schweitzer's, but it's hard to distinguish the truth from island rumors. At this point, detectives have collected samples from the VW, mouth swabs, hairs, and dental impressions to compare to the bite mark left on Dana's chest from all the suspects, Ian, Sean, and Frank.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
They turn to Dr. Norman Sperber, a forensic odontologist, to compare the bite marks. We now know that bite mark evidence isn't scientifically valid, but even then, Dr. Sperber finds that none of the impressions match the bite mark. More importantly, there aren't any matches to the DNA.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Frank's story also continues to change, and theories start to swirl around John Gonsalves' initial call to the Hawaii Police Department and Frank Pauline's confession, and maybe how they benefit from it.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
In November of 1993, about seven months before John made his phone call, John and his mother Pat, alongside his cousin Timmy and a few others, were tied to the largest cocaine conspiracy case in Big Island history at the time. And the family was in real trouble. They were facing charges of conspiracy to promote a dangerous drug in the first.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
So people are starting to think that Frank's initial confession was designed to benefit the Gonsalves, especially when in the spring of 1995, John Gonsalves agreed to a plea bargain with a reduced sentence, probation and 90 days in jail. Their mother's charges were dropped, too. The war between the Schweitzer family and the Pauline Gonsalves family is now on display for the public to see.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
And by April 1995, Frank continues to change his story. And on the 21st, he makes his fifth statement to the police. Frank calls up Detective Guillermo and now says a fourth person was involved. Frank says he saw his brother, Wayne Gonsalves, sexually assault Dana Ireland, and he immediately decided to run away and didn't return until 30 minutes later.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
So he can't really speak to anything else that happened during that time. But of course, when investigators take Frank out the next day for another reconstruction, asking him to recount everything again now with this fourth person, Wayne, involved, his version of the story keeps changing and just gets more confusing.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
During our visit with Ian and Sean, we asked them every question under the sun, trying to understand how they became involved in one of the most notorious murders in Hawaii history.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Frank's mom, Pat, who is no longer facing any criminal charges, says that despite what Frank is saying, he didn't have anything to do with the murder. She even gives him an alibi and says Frank was home at the time of the crime, but his drug use is the reason he believes he was at the scene. When detectives talk to Wayne, he denies being a part of any of this.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
He thinks Frank implicated him to avoid taking the blame alone and thinks he probably just wanted company in jail. Frank is obviously a reckless dude. And he hasn't thought through exactly how all his little stories wouldn't just ruin the Schweitzer's lives, but his own life too. Because he may just be a pawn in an even bigger chess game.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
So when I heard that Ian was being exonerated, I was thrilled to pay that energy forward by welcoming him into freedom and into our community of wrongly convicted brothers and sisters. But it takes time to adjust. It took me years to wrap my mind around everything that happened to me.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
But the biggest question was, if Ian and Sean had nothing to do with Dana Ireland's murder, why did Frank Pauline say they did? I'm Amanda Knox, and this is Three. Chapter 3, Family Feud.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
In June of 1991, about six months before Dana Ireland was murdered, Ian and Sean's mother, Linda Schweitzer, actually filed a police report against one of the Gonsalves boys, Timmy, claiming he was threatening to fight the Schweitzer family and was throwing rocks at the Schweitzer home. That's about as far as any type of interaction between the families went.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
While Linda Schweitzer worked for the prosecutor's office and Jerry Schweitzer, their father, was your quintessential neighborhood dad, the Gonsalves were known throughout the area to be notorious for selling and using drugs. Fast forward.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Almost three years after Linda Schweitzer filed her report against Timmy, John Gonsalves calls the Hawaii Police Department and says his half-brother Frank Pauline told him information about Dana Ireland's case, that the Schweitzer brothers killed her.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
That's Ken Lawson, current co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project, a member of the legal team representing the Schweitzer brothers.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Sound a little sketch? In June of 1994, more than two weeks after his first conversation with the Hawaii Police Department, Frank sits down again with Detective Guillermo and his team. And this time, he's had a minute to think about his answers, but still admits a lot of the details are not 100% concrete.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Nonetheless, Frank says that on December 24th, 1991, he was picked up by the Schweitzer brothers in a purple VW Beetle, once owned by his cousin, Timmy Gonzales. Ian drove, his brother Sean rode shotgun, and Frank sat in the back. In this interview, Frank says that after the Schweitzer brothers picked him up, they stopped six or seven times to smoke crack cocaine.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
And while they were driving around, they spotted a woman walking her bike along the road. According to Frank, Ian turned the car around after passing the woman and accelerated right towards her, making contact.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
And so it wasn't until July of 2023 that our team went back to the Big Island and to Fern Forest, a small community of a thousand or so, about 45 minutes south of Hilo, to talk in-depth with Ian and his brother Sean. The drive from Hilo to Fern Forest is full of tall greenery. The houses are set back off the road, each with a privacy gate, or no trespassing sign.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
He says he then watched the brothers load the woman into the trunk of the VW and that he refused to help them, but rode along as they took her to an unknown dirt road towards the ocean, where he watched Ian sexually assault her.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Knowing they could be identified, Frank claims Ian decided he needed to get rid of her. So Frank says he saw him grab a tire iron and hit her over the head with it. But then he's not sure what happened. He doesn't remember if the brothers put the woman back in the trunk or if they just left her there. But he knows that afterwards, all three of them headed back to the Schweitzer's house.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Ian showered and Frank and Sean washed the purple VW Bug. Once Ian finished his shower, Frank says Ian brought a black trash bag outside so they could all put their clothes in the bag and then he threw it in the bushes in the yard before the Schweitzer's dropped Frank back off at his house.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
And since then, Frank says, the only other conversation he's had with Ian was when Ian told him at some point to keep quiet about everything or else. So what a story. And detectives think so, too. Knowing Frank's reputation and history of lying, this didn't seem like the slam dunk they were looking for. But with all the detail in his story, detectives at least entertain the idea.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
And that same day, they have Frank take them through the route he claims he and the Schweitzer's took before running into Dana. Starting at Frank's house, Frank takes detectives through their drive that day, vaguely pointing out key spots. But he can't say exactly where they initially hit Dana while she was riding her bike.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
But either way, the more Frank talks, no matter how specific or general he is, the more police are feeling confident about his story. But at the same time, remember, Dana's case by now has made national news, and everyone on the island knows the details, including the locations. So this isn't exactly exclusive information.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Nonetheless, detectives turn their attention to the Schweitzer's, and specifically to the VW bug. They speak with the Gonsalves, who say that Ian bought the VW from their family, and while they aren't exactly sure what date, they know it's sometime in 1991.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
But when Ian Schweitzer decided to buy the VW Bug, he claims it wasn't from Timmy, even though the Gonsalves say he did. He says he bought it from a guy named Shannon who bought it from Timmy, and Ian bought it to add to their already growing collection.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
So on June 26th, detectives receive a search warrant and head to the Schweitzer household to check their place out and specifically the VW bug.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Occasionally, we spot one of the residents on foot on the road, and they offer up a friendly wave or smile back at us. When we pull up to Sean Schweitzer's house, the gate is open, and the yard has a scattering of cars and trucks. Ian Schweitzer is standing outside waiting to greet our team. At 52, he has short, graying hair, but he looks like he's in the best shape of his life.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
When Sean first arrives at the Hawaii Police Department, accompanied by his father, Jerry, he isn't 100% sure what is going on, until detectives start questioning him.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Sean tells investigators that on December 24, 1991, he was at home. He says that he can't say for sure where Ian was, but he knows for a fact that he himself was home, because that's where he always spends his Christmas Eves. Investigators also talk to Sean's dad, Jerry, and when they ask him about why the Gonsalves would implicate his sons, he tells them everything we currently know.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
That their families did not get along, and specifically, John and Frank's cousins, Timmy and Wayne, tried to start fights with the family and broke a window at their house. When Sean's asked to take a polygraph, initially he is skeptical, not trusting the machines, but later changes his mind, offering to take the test a different day so he can get back to caring for his children.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Next stop was Sean's brother, Ian. Three days later, the Hawaii Police Department gets a hold of him while he's living in Kauai working in health care. To those who know Ian, like his sister-in-law, Treaty, and Randy Roth from the Hawaii Innocence Project, this work suited Ian.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
And like Sean, Ian remembers hearing about the murder of this young woman in Vacationland, but didn't give it a ton of thought at the time either.
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Family Feud | Chapter 3
Ian remembers pretty clearly where he and Sean were at on December 24th, 1991.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
So after the Hawaii Police Department pulls a fork used by Albert Laurel Jr., things stay quiet as they wait for the results of the testing. Then finally, on July 1st, 2024, the results come in, and they confirm that the DNA found at the crime scene of Dana Ireland's attack is indeed connected to Albert Laurel Jr.,
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
The lab notifies both the Hawaii Innocence Project and the Hawaii Police Department. But the ball is in the Hawaii Police Department's court at this point.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
And the more they stay quiet, and the longer they take to do something, the more the team at the Hawaii Innocence Project becomes concerned that whatever nonsense happened behind the scenes that led to Sean and Ian's wrongful conviction is the same nonsense happening behind the scenes today.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
As Ken Lawson and the Hawaii Innocence Project try to figure out just what the heck is going on with Albert Laurel Jr., they are set off on a bit of a wild goose chase.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
When it's said Steve Kramer was part of the team that identified the Golden State Killer, we mean that after 40 years of failed attempts to do so, he made it happen in 63 days. Which is just incredible.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
After the Hawaii Innocence Project team reaches out to the attorney general and prosecutors demanding to know the suspect's whereabouts, they receive an immediate response that prompts an emergency Zoom meeting between the Hawaii Innocence Project and prosecutors Shannon Kagawa and Michael Kagame.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
During this call, Ken and the prosecutors go back and forth about the whereabouts of their suspect, Albert Laurel Jr., because Ken thinks it's a terrible mistake for police to tell Laurel Jr. that he's a suspect, bring him into swab, and then just let him go. That just isn't acceptable. The prosecution disagrees with Ken's idea of, quote, best practices, but they're playing coy.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
All of this to say, by the vibe of the conversation, Ken is feeling confident that Laurel Jr. isn't in some jail somewhere or being held by Hawaii PD. He's sure they've let him go. So he pushes and pushes, trying to get someone to tell him the actual truth.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
And because of all that, the Hawaii Innocence Project believed Kramer and his business partner, Steve Bush, who co-founded the FBI genetic genealogy team together, could be their ticket to identifying unknown male number one.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
Concerned that their suspect, who was very much alive at the time Steve Kramer and Steve Bush identified him as Dana Ireland's killer, is now not, Ken Lawson starts making more calls.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
Now, because of the joint investigation agreement between the Hawaii Innocence Project and the prosecution's office, the Hawaii Innocence Project had access to all of the DNA evidence. But they were frustrated by the lack of progress made in Dana's case after Ian's exoneration. Here's Hawaii Innocence Project co-director Ken Lawson.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
That's next in Chapter 8, which you can listen to next week.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
In February 2024, the Hawaii Innocence Project engaged a man named Steve Kramer. And let's just say, this guy is no joke.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
To reiterate, the Hawaii Innocence Project started working with Steve Kramer on February 7th, and Steve Kramer provided results 19 days later. In a case that has ruined so much and taken decades of life and freedom away from so many, it took only weeks for everything to change. I'm Amanda Knox, and this is 3. Chapter 7, Hiding in Plain Sight.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
In two weeks, Steve Kramer knew more about their suspect than ever before.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
It wasn't Ian Schweitzer. Or Sean Schweitzer. Or Frank Pauline Jr. Not even the prison priest, Frank Nazario, Anthony Torres, or Roy Santos, who if you think all the way back to episode two, were at the top of the suspect pool for a minute there, albeit for different reasons. The name didn't end with Gonsalves either.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
This name was actually nowhere to be found on any list held by law enforcement, the prosecutor's office, or the Hawaii Innocence Project. This guy wasn't on anybody's radar for the past 32 years. Remember, they don't have a DNA match yet, but via ancestry information and research through public records and social media, they've got a very likely suspect, a 57-year-old man named Albert Laurel Jr.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
He'd spent the last three decades building a life with a wife and kids while Ian Schweitzer sat in a prison cell and while Sean Schweitzer took to life in the shadows.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
Back in the 1990s, Albert Laurel Jr. was living only two miles from the crime scene. He was known to fish along the isolated trail Dana's body was found on. He also drove a pickup truck, which people long suspected was the vehicle that struck Dana, not a VW Bug. He would have been 25 at the time of Dana's murder.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
No one from law enforcement to anyone's knowledge or in any of the case files ever talked to Albert, a member of his family, or even knocked on his door during a traditional neighborhood canvas.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
After Steve Kramer and Steve Bush get their lead, they contact the FBI, who are working alongside the Hawaii Police Department, with the results. From there, the FBI's genealogy team would take the next steps.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
Between February and July of 2024, the Hawaii Police Department tries to cross their T's and dot their I's, and they want to conduct additional testing. So with the advice of Steve Kramer, they decide to go track down Albert Laurel Jr. and tail him for a bit, until they are able to do a trash grab and snag one of his forks. That will enable them to develop a full DNA profile for Laurel Jr.
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Hiding in Plain Sight | Chapter 7
and see if it matches the DNA profile of unknown male number one. In the meantime, Ken Lawson and everyone else at the Hawaii Innocence Project has to keep their mouths shut and not tell anyone about this new lead. Even their clients, Ian and Sean.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
The Hawaii Innocence Project, like all innocence projects around the country, is a nonprofit dedicated to freeing people they believe were wrongly convicted, often by finding exculpatory DNA evidence. Ken Lawson was hired as a clerk of sorts by the co-director at the time, Randy Roth, in 2010.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
And locals are vocal about their own frustrations with the investigation.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Dana's father, John, keeps the pressure on the investigators, praying they're onto something soon. But he's tired of waiting. The Irlands also pursue a lawsuit against the state and county for their delayed arrival to the scene to help Dana on Christmas Eve in 1991. They ultimately settle out of court. But no amount of money can make up for what the Ireland family lost. They don't want this.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
They want Dana. Or at the very least, answers as to why they no longer have her. By 1994, two and a half years after Dana's murder, despite numerous leads, tons of interviews, no arrests have been made. But rumors continue to swirl on the Big Island. Indict Dana Ireland's murderer's bumper stickers are spotted on vehicles on the island as the pressure to find the killer has only intensified.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
On May 23, 1994, lead detective Stephen Guillermo gets a call from a man wanting to talk to him because he says that this guy Frank Pauline Jr. and two brothers Ian and Sean Schweitzer are connected to the murder of Dana Ireland. This isn't the first time investigators have heard the name Frank Pauline in connection to Dana Ireland.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
He first got on the Hawaii Police Department's radar only three months after Dana's murder through an anonymous tip that claimed Frank was either involved or had information about the murder. And even though Frank's got a record, it doesn't seem like investigators are all that interested in him, even after receiving various calls about him throughout 1993. But this one is different.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
The caller is reaching out on behalf of a guy named John Gonsalves, who is Frank Pauline's half-brother. And John himself is no stranger to police either. Investigators know a lot of the Gonsalves-Pauline family. They are frequent flyers of the Hawaii Police Department. Two of the Gonsalves brothers, Timmy and John, were both arrested for drug crimes a year prior.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
But when the caller explains why they're calling, they don't say John himself had anything to do with the murder of Dana Ireland. They say that John will be reaching out to the Hawaii Police Department soon because he is ready to come forward and provide information on the case, specifically about his half-brother, 21-year-old Frank Pauline Jr.,
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
After getting off the phone with this tipster, detectives wait, but not long. About 25 minutes later, John Gonsalves calls, ready to spill the beans. On the call, John tells police that about a week earlier, his brother Frank flat out admitted to him that he was there when Dana was murdered.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
He says he was riding in a pickup truck with two brothers, then 20-year-old Ian Schweitzer and Ian's 16-year-old brother, Sean. And he watched with his own eyes as the Schweitzer brothers attacked Dana Ireland. So naturally, investigators want to talk to Frank to hear his side of the story. But when they do, he doesn't exactly sing like a canary.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
After Ken became associated with the Hawaii Innocence Project, he eventually joined the faculty at the University of Hawaii Law School, alongside the person who first welcomed him into the Hawaii Innocence Project.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Frank plays a little coy with detectives, saying he isn't ready to speak quite yet. But detectives don't take no for an answer, and they get him transported from the Halava Correctional Facility, where he was already serving a 10-year sentence for a separate crime, to the Attorney General's office for an interview with lead detective Guillermo.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
And when they sit down, Frank gives somewhat of a statement. Frank claims that on December 24th, 1991, he was picked up by the Schweitzer brothers after they asked him if he wanted to do some drugs with them. But Frank also says he wasn't close friends with Ian and Sean. So it's unclear how this interaction could have even been provoked to begin with.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
But nevertheless, Frank says he decides to go with them anyways. But then, before going on, Frank does something weird. He decides he needs to, quote, sort out the details before giving Detective Guillermo any more info. Mostly because his memories are a little fuzzy, he says, because he was high on cocaine while he was with the Schweitzers.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
So Frank finishes up his interview by telling Detective Guillermo that he vaguely remembers Ian hitting a woman with a tire iron. And sometime after the attack, the clothing the brothers were wearing got thrown away. Somewhere. And then Frank says, I'll send you guys a more detailed statement of what happened that day soon. See ya.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
And what's even stranger is that the investigators are fine with that. They allow Frank the time to flesh out his story. This should have been a huge red flag for the reliability of his statement. Even so, this outlined play-by-play of what Frank claims happened the evening of December 24th, 1991 never comes. But investigators do sit down with Frank several more times.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Now, to understand anything about the next conversations investigators have with Frank, you need to understand the culture of the Big Island, the one Lynn Kawano told us about when we first met.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Since first looking into this case, Ken Lawson and his team at the Hawaii Innocence Project have spent a lot of time in the case file from the investigation. They wanted to know exactly how we ended up where we are today. How so many names got thrown into this mess. Because remember, we're not even to an arrest yet, let alone a conviction.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
And over the years, he rose through the ranks to become an associate director and now co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. But Ken began practicing law long before then, starting out in 1989 in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he also opened up his own law firm in 1993.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
And that's because, as Ken Lawson sees it, from the very beginning, these witness interviews weren't exactly handled appropriately. I'm Amanda Knox, and this is Three. Chapter 2, The Aftermath. We mentioned in episode one that at the time of the incident, Eric told investigators that he and his girlfriend lived on Illilani Road.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
And on that day, December 24th, he said he was outside of his house when he noticed a pickup truck at the intersection of Illilani Road and Kapoho Kai Drive facing southwest, which was the spot where Dana was presumably hit. He recalled the specifics during a walkthrough of the scene with law enforcement.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
But when investigators interview Eric again, that's not all he claims to remember. Now he's saying he can even remember what the driver specifically looked like.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Eric also says he believes this guy has a brother named Chris. And that, combined with the description, makes investigators believe he's got to be talking about someone they are quite familiar with, a local named Frank Nasario. Now, here's the thing with our man Eric. Almost every time he's interviewed, he throws in some new piece of information he's confident matters and is accurate.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
His firm handled many high-profile clients throughout 1993 to 2007, like now University of Colorado Boulder football coach Deion Sanders. But what's unique here is that Ken relates to many of his clients now in a way very few lawyers do. He had a successful practice until his license was revoked because of misconduct while addicted to prescription painkillers.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
But even though Eric's accounts are a little unpredictable, this is the best lead detectives have, so they continue to look deeper into Frank while still keeping their options open. And keeping options open isn't exactly a challenge.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Every day, they are getting a slew of tips calling out basically every person on the Big Island who owns a pickup truck that even remotely resembles the ones witnesses say they saw at or near the scene. Add to that the names of anyone known to be sketchy in some way or another, and as you can imagine, there are a lot of names. But in the mix are two individuals that investigators can't ignore.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
27-year-old Anthony Torres, who happens to be Frank's brother-in-law, and 21-year-old Roy Santos. Between Frank Nassario, Anthony Torres, and Roy Santos, detectives now have what they believe to be three viable suspects for different reasons. Frank Nassario checks a lot of investigators' boxes. He matches the description of the man Eric Carlsmith claims to have seen near the accident.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
His family owns several Datsun pickup trucks, one of which has black primer paint with some aqua bluish-green spots on it, and detectives receive several tips placing Frank in the area at the time.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Then you have Anthony Torres, who gets on investigators' radar because he happens to be married to Frank's sister and lives with Frank, so he has access to those same vehicles the Nasarios are known to use. Also, several individuals call in tips claiming to have seen him in one of those pickup trucks. And lastly, there's Roy Santos.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
In early January, police receive a call from an individual who says they noticed a tan-colored van parked near where Dana Ireland had initially been run over. And other witnesses reiterate this, saying they believe they saw Roy driving the tan-colored van with two others on Christmas Eve near the scene.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
That's Lynn Kawano, award-winning chief investigative reporter for Hawaii News Now, which, according to their website, is the state's dominant multimedia news organization with the largest digital news footprint in the islands. Lynn has been following and covering Dana's case for a long time.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
He pleaded guilty to the felony of obtaining controlled substances by fraudulent means and was sentenced to 24 months in prison, which he served 10 of before heading to a living sober facility in Hawaii for six months, followed by 12 months of supervisory release.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
The same was true in my case. Perugia was a small town, and violent crime was rare. So news of my roommate Meredith's murder shocked the city and drew international attention. And that put enormous pressure on the local authorities to solve the crime fast. But when investigators move too quickly, mistakes get made.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
By February of 1992, all three men are brought in for separate interviews and each claim the same thing. They are not responsible for the murder of Dana Ireland. But are they telling the truth? Are the witnesses? Investigators bring out the polygraph machine. Witness Eric Carlsmith's girlfriend Karina takes a polygraph test and passes.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
And since she does, the examiner decides Eric's test is unnecessary because of the fact they were together at the time of their observations and basically submitted statements that were similar in nature. Mark Evans, the friend Dana went to see after leaving the rental on Christmas Eve, also passes the polygraph. Suspects Frank Nassario and Anthony Torres refuse to take the test.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Then there's Roy Santos and his mother, who owns the tan-colored van. During both of their polygraphs, alleged deception is detected. Not a great look to detectives in the 1990s, who place a lot of faith in the accuracy of the polygraph. Today, we know better.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
The polygraph cannot measure deception, but rather measures signs of physiological arousal, your blood pressure and pulse, your breath rate, perspiration, and skin conductivity. And there are many potential sources of stress and anxiety, aside from deception, that may alter someone's physiological responses. This is why polygraph results are typically inadmissible in court.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Still, many laypeople and those in law enforcement continue to put unwarranted faith in the accuracy of the polygraph, which so often can send investigators down the wrong trail and derail justice, as we'll see in this case. After interviewing their three prime suspects, investigators also collect DNA samples from them. Well, from who they're able to.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
Roy and Anthony comply with the detectives' requests, including a search and collection of samples from their vehicles. But Frank is not playing ball. So for the next few months, investigators are in a bit of a waiting pattern as their samples are being tested.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
But by July 1992, any hope investigators have that the DNA samples will bring them and the community the answers they're craving is dashed. The FBI lab says that none of the DNA collected from the vehicles in question matches the DNA from the crime scene and from Dana's body. They've hit a dead end. The police keep an eye on Frank Nassario, Anthony Torres, and Roy Santos.
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The Aftermath | Chapter 2
But for almost a year, there are no major movements as detectives continue to hit wall after wall. All throughout this time, John and Louise Ireland, who are both approaching 70, continue to make the exhausting 4,800-mile commute between their Virginia home and Hawaii, hoping each time that maybe today will be the day they get justice for Dana.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
But when they arrived, Dana's mom, Louise, saw what was going on, assumed Dana had been involved in some kind of accident, and so the family headed over to the local hospital in case she showed up. But they never imagined she would show up like this. They watch in shock as the doctors do their best to save Dana. But she is just too far gone.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
A little after midnight on Christmas morning, Dana dies after hours of attempted life-saving measures. Her cause of death, exsanguination or blood loss due to multiple traumatic injuries of the head, neck, chest, abdomen, and pelvis. In Dana's autopsy report, Dr. Charles Reinhold notes a disturbing amount of injuries.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Dana's chest, back, arms, legs, and face were covered with abrasions, cuts, and bruises. Her collarbone and pelvis were fractured. She had extensive hemorrhaging in her heart, lungs, stomach, and bladder. But the doctors find something even more disturbing and which can't be explained by a car accident. a bite mark on her left breast, and the presence of semen.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
So while Dana's family is reeling from her sudden death, police scour not just the one, but the two scenes related to Dana, which are about five miles apart. The first scene is on Kapoho Kai Drive, where Dana's bike was discovered. They find tire impressions in the dirt.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
They make plaster casts of the tracks and take several pictures of tire marks, including a single deep gouge mark on Kapoho Kai Drive, which larger double tire tracks lead into. Detectives identify the gouge mark as the point at which the bicycle tire was driven into the road from the collision. They find Dana's black bicycle seat on the side of the road near the tracks.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Once finished at the collision scene, detectives head five miles away to the Waawaa Fishing Trail, where Dana had been found. She was about 80 to 90 feet off the main road in the bushes, just off the right side of the trail. Leaves surrounding her were bloody, too, as if she'd been placed or possibly thrown there in an effort to conceal her.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Her jean shorts and her missing white avia tennis shoe are found nearby. But there's more. There's a child's black McGregor shoe, the left one only, and two white socks stuffed inside. There's also a blue-colored T-shirt, size large, with a print of a station wagon and the Jimmy Z logo, which was a popular brand at the time, especially on the Big Island.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Then, up the trail, about halfway between the road and where Dana was found, a black knit adult sock and a red panty, size large. Police also find cigarette butts and two Corona beer bottles. Everything gets collected and tagged. But what is at the scene is only part of the story. The question still stands as to how Dana could have ended up there.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
After speaking with her family and witnesses at both crime scenes, authorities tried to build a rough timeline of events based on everything they know so far, which begins at the home of Mark Evans in Apohika'o at 4.10 p.m.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Mark was the friend Dana went to visit on her bike the night of the murder, and he told police that while their relationship in the beginning leaned a little towards the romantic side, they were totally platonic. Sometime shortly thereafter, the police speak to a witness who says they saw a woman who looked like Dana passing places called Shacks and Secrets, both local surfing hangout spots.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Based on this, authorities determined she was run over at approximately 4.40 p.m., less than half a mile from her parents' Vacationland rental home, which she was most likely headed back to for the family's Christmas Eve dinner.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Then, as she was riding her bike, she was struck in the rear by a vehicle heading in the Makai direction, aka east towards the sea, on Kapoho Kai Drive, which would indicate that Dana was also traveling in the Makai direction, on the right side of the road, before someone grabbed her and drove away to move her to that isolated area along the trail.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
There, she would endure a nightmare before being left for dead. As detectives continued to work to fill in the pieces, a flurry of calls and leads about trucks, vans, and SUVs believed to be in the area flows in from the community. One comes from Eric Carlsmith. He lives on the first house on the left on Ililani Road, and he says he was with his girlfriend Karina on Christmas Eve.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
He tells police he noticed a pickup truck facing southwest at the intersection of Ililani Road and Kapohokai Drive. This was the spot where Dana was hit.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
So police are focusing on a truck or van. And this makes sense. The road from Vacationland to the Ocean Trail off Beach Road, where Dana was found, is barely drivable by a car. It's a tucked away, isolated, unpaved fishing trail of sorts, and really only known to the locals in the area. It'd be hard to find otherwise. But obviously, they still need more.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
And fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, there's no shortage of witness accounts. And this is the part where I would have walked you through detectives interviewing each one of them from the day Dana was found. Like Ida Smith, the woman who first found Dana.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Or Demian Fierro, who was 10 at the time and was one of the first ones to discover the broken bike in the road.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
But like I said before, the story we were planning on telling you when we first started investigating in 2023 is a very different one today in 2025. Which means how we tell it to you is also very different, because what holds weight now is not the same as then. So instead, in this series, I'll be focusing on what you need to know to understand how we ended up where we are today.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
How so many lives got tangled up in one of the most devastating and high-profile cases to ever hit the Big Island. Coming up on this season of 3... There were no winners. There were no winners in this entire situation.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
That's Ken Lawson, the co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. They have been looking into Ian's case since around 2006. But when Ken started in 2010, he took it over, and ever since, he's been damn near determined to prove his client's innocence. But no one had predicted that today would be the day. Especially not Ian.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
To everyone's surprise, the judge announces his verdict later that same day.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
And for almost two decades, the Innocence Project has been trying to help him prove it. Ian's team, including the legendary Barry Sheck, who co-founded the original Innocence Project in 1992, well, they would spend the next seven hours stating their case in front of Judge Kubota.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
In a matter of hours, Ian Schweitzer is free. Well, sort of. It's a feeling very few people understand. Being charged and convicted of a crime you didn't commit. While his story played out a little differently, Ian's brother Sean is also one of those people.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
As the verdict was read, a crowd outside the courtroom burst into cheers. Inside the courtroom, Amanda Knox and her family began to sob. I'm Amanda Knox, and while studying abroad in 2007, what was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime college experience turned into a life-altering nightmare.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
One I would spend the following eight years trapped inside of and will carry with me for the rest of my life.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
In February 2023, after Ian was released from prison, I traveled to Hawaii and met him in person. Little did I know that almost two years later, I would be sitting down now with you all to tell you what has happened since that very conversation. Behind every wrongful conviction is a devastating and complicated web that is almost impossible to untangle.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
It's 9.21 a.m. on Tuesday, January 24, 2023, and a man named Ian Schweitzer is standing in a courtroom in Hilo, Hawaii. He's not a total stranger to this feeling or to the criminal justice system in general. He's been here before. But this time, it's for very different reasons. Over 23 years ago, Ian was convicted of a crime he firmly asserts he did not commit.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
But during this series, we're going to try to do just that. Because justice doesn't have to be complicated. And the victims in this case deserve clarity. Justice too long delayed is justice denied.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Over the past 18 months, we've had a team of people who've been out on the Hawaiian islands investigating this story, talking to the people that were there firsthand, some who have never spoken out before, recording in-depth interviews that you will hear nowhere else. We've poured through nearly 40,000 pages of documents about this case.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
We've listened to countless hours of audio, from witness stories and confessions to secret grand jury testimony and never-before-heard interviews with jailhouse informants. All so we could discover the truth behind the murder of Dana Ireland and the three families who will never be the same because of it.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
But what we didn't expect was that the story would change drastically over the last year and a half as we investigated. Actually, no one did. In July 2024, the world found out who really killed Dana Ireland. A name that never popped up on investigators' radar matched the DNA left at the scene and on the body of Dana Ireland.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
But to understand how we got here, you have to understand what has transpired in the 33 years since Dana Ireland was murdered. I'm Amanda Knox, and this is 3, Season 2. Murder in Vacationland.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
We're asking you to come with us to the Big Island to hear the untold story of what really happened to Dana Ireland and how her death impacted the lives of three families, the Irlands, the Schweitzers, and the Paulines.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Chapter 1, Christmas in Hawaii. It's December 1991 in a small town, Kapoho, located on the eastern end of what's known as the Big Island of Hawaii. It's not the place most mainlanders think of when they imagine the Hawaii islands. It's quieter, slower, serene, the ultimate tropical paradise, and often called one of Hawaii's best-kept secrets.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
And within Kapoho, there is this little subdivision called, almost too perfectly, Vacationland. At around 5.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, a local woman named Ida Smith had just gotten home from running some afternoon errands and is settling back when she hears something strange. The call of a hawk? No. She realizes what she's hearing is not bird calls.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
It's sounding more like a girl who is calling for help. Ida quickly follows the direction of the faint screams, which take her towards a vacant house near her property. And then she sees her. About 80 to 90 feet down the narrow gravel roadway towards the waterfront, surrounded by bushes, is a young woman in desperate need of medical attention.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
She is barely clothed, and it's clear she is suffering from numerous injuries by the And based on her appearance, Ida also believes the woman has been sexually assaulted.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Ida books it to the main road on the other side of her home to flag down the first car she sees. Thankfully, it doesn't take long, and in a matter of minutes, a group of individuals, including a nurse who lives nearby, are down there comforting the victim as they anxiously wait for an ambulance to arrive. And they're praying it won't be long, because the woman's condition is only getting worse.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
It's obvious she is in severe pain, and through it, she's trying to make words. Some are coherent, some not. But they can make out her name. Dana. Dana. By 6.20 p.m., an officer makes his way to the scene, but unfortunately, the ambulance doesn't arrive for another hour. Once arrived, Ida and the group watch as Dana is whisked away towards Hilo Hospital, two hours after Ida found her.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
It might have been sooner if she wasn't in such a remote area, but it was the type of path you wouldn't even know was there unless you knew. By 8 p.m., a flurry of people, including paramedics, rush Dana into the hospital on a gurney. And there, in the waiting room, is her family. They've been there for about two hours.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
Ever since they figured out something was wrong, and now they are watching their Dana, 23-year-old Dana Ireland, fighting for her life. When detectives speak with Dana's older sister, Sandy, in the waiting room, they discover Sandy moved to the Big Island a few years earlier, and Dana came to visit often. Then, only two months prior, Dana decided to stay in Hawaii for good.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
So for the holidays, Dana and Sandy's parents, John and Louise Ireland, decided to fly in from Virginia and join them on the Big Island for a few weeks. The family says earlier that day, before they were planning on celebrating Christmas Eve, Dana decided to go on a bike ride. So she borrowed her sister Sandy's bike and headed out to her friend Mark's house, which is about a seven-mile ride.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
But when Sandy and her boyfriend Jim were driving over to their parents' rental house around 5 p.m., they saw something on the side of the road that caught their attention. A crowd of people all gathered around what looked like the scene of an accident. Sandy went from curious to terrified when she recognized the crushed bike lying in the road.
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Christmas in Hawai’i | Chapter 1
It was her bike, the one she had just let Dana borrow a couple hours earlier. Next to it was Dana's wristwatch, the band completely broken, a foot-long chunk of blonde hair, and a single white athletic shoe, still tied. Sandy and Jim rushed to her parents' rental, which was just minutes away, to tell them what they saw, and they all headed back to the scene.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
I was in a grocery store in Hilo buying milk for my toddler when I saw the newspaper at the checkout stand. I recognized the expression on Ian's face, the struggle to grasp that he was actually free. And in that moment, the grocery store around me took on the surreal feel it had when I first came home, a feeling I knew Ian would experience soon enough.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
I'd missed the rise of Obama and our intro into the iconic Taylor Swift and a million other things. Compared to me, Ian had so much more to catch up on.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
As for Frank Pauline Jr., based on all the forensic evidence, he was not responsible for the crime against Dana, and none of his confessions can be substantiated. But this came too late for Frank Pauline Jr., who died in prison after another inmate attacked him in the wreckyard on his 42nd birthday.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
That's Miles Briner, the attorney who has been handling Frank Pauline's estate since 2023. And he knows that Frank wasn't exactly the most stand-up guy at moments. He was complicated, and not a lot of his actions can be easily explained. But he is confident in his client's innocence.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
In the October 2023 hearings, Frank Pauline's conviction was also under question. So Frank's family was in attendance, and members from the Paulines and Schweitzers came face-to-face for the first time. Two of Frank's aunts were there to support their nephew, even though he had been dead now for over eight years.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Since his release, Ian can't work yet and is now living with his brother, Sean. Despite the guilt that Sean suffered for all those years while Ian was in prison, the two have grown closer than ever. Yet, they will never get back the time lost, nor forget the pain or trauma the past couple decades have brought them. Which brings us to the end of 2023.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Through the dedication of the Hawaii Innocence Project team, their colleagues at several forensic DNA labs, and the advancements in DNA science, a DNA profile was created for the infamous unknown male number one. His exact identity still remains a mystery throughout 2023, which could mean one of two things. One... Whoever killed Dana hasn't committed any other crimes.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Or, two, their DNA hasn't been collected and entered into the database in the years since. Regardless, this means Dana Ireland's murder is still unsolved.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Remember John Gonsalves, the man who initially reached out to Hawaii PD and told them to expect a call from Frank with information about Dana Ireland's killer? We reached out to John and we were able to get him on the phone.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
We tried to make plans to talk more extensively. He never called us back. Years before his death in 2015, Frank actually wrote Ian a letter in prison, apologizing for everything he did and admitting that Ian had nothing to do with it. He sent the letter through a retired judge, Mike Heavey, who advocated for my own innocence and has since become a friend. Here's a VO actor reading Frank's letter.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
I'm Amanda Knox, and this is Three. Chapter 6, Unknown Male Number One. Only four days after his release, Randy Roth and Ken Lawson of the Hawaii Innocence Project have dinner with Ian.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Now, the estate of Frank Pauline is also working on his posthumous exoneration, something that has never been done in the history of the state of Hawaii.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
And this is where our story ended. Or so we thought. We were going to monitor it closely over the next few months, knowing that at some point in time, Ian and Sean would have hearings to hopefully be fully declared factually innocent and receive their well-deserved compensation from the state.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
But in July of 2024, when we reached out to the Hawaii Innocence Project to make sure we were all buttoned up for release, we were shocked by the response we received. End quote. End quote.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
While the Hawaii PD has publicly acknowledged their continued cooperation with the Hawaii Innocence Project to find the killer right after Ian's exoneration, we were shocked to learn that they also asked for all the DNA evidence and case information back from the Hawaii Innocence Project.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
They also assigned a new officer to the case, and they shared with the media that new interviews or re-interviews are taking place now. But despite the news that the biggest murder case in modern Hawaii history convicted the wrong people, everyone has suddenly gone quiet. And so the question that spread like shockwaves throughout Hawaii back on Christmas Eve 1991 still stands.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Who killed 23-year-old Dana Ireland, and why? When we first traveled to Hawaii to begin our coverage on the murder of Dana Ireland and the subsequent wrongful convictions of Albert Ian Schweitzer, Sean Schweitzer, and Frank Pauline Jr., our hope was to help push these cases even just a little bit towards real justice through national attention.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
We wanted the world to know where the true innocence lies in this case, and that there is a full list of potential suspects screaming for the Hawaii Police Department's attention. For the sake of three families. The Ireland family, the Schweitzer family, and even the Paulines. And almost a full year later, we were ready to do just that.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
But little did we know everything that was happening behind the scenes.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
the seemingly endless choices after a world of deprivation. Even just the color palette of a place like this, with its bright fruits and vegetables and packaging, was a shock after years of gray concrete and steel. In the blink of an eye, Ian went from a prisoner of the Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona to a free man back in his home of Hilo, Hawaii.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
A few days after that dinner, I met Ian for the first time as we shared the stage at a Hawaii Innocence Project event to educate law students about the causes and costs of a wrongful conviction.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
And one area that is in desperate need of change is how the wrongly convicted are supported after release. Emerging from prison is destabilizing and disorienting, whether you're guilty or innocent. But ironically, the guilty are provided many more resources when they are paroled, from counseling to help with housing, medical care, and food.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
The wrongly convicted, by contrast, often don't even get a bus pass.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
But there's compensation, right? There's no guarantee, especially because many wrongly convicted people who get released aren't done with the legal battle to clear their name. Not guilty isn't the same as innocent. In my own case, though I was acquitted in 2011, the Italian courts retried me for the same crime in absentia.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
He walked out of the courtroom, not in shackles like he had walked in, but hand in hand with his mom and dad, who for the last 30 years since all this started, had been mourning the life they all lost. After years in prison, stepping into the outside world is like stepping through the looking glass. There's a distorted surreality to the mundane.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
I was found guilty again, and I had to appeal again, all the while facing extradition back to Italy. I spent another four years in that limbo, unable to plant roots or move on with my life, fearing that the future would take me back to that prison cell across the world.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
How do you get a job or date or even move through society when everyone you meet sees you under a cloud of suspicion because you're not yet legally vindicated? It wasn't until 2015 that Italy's Supreme Court finally declared me factually innocent of murder. In Ian's case, his conviction was vacated and he walked free.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
But all that meant was that there wasn't sufficient evidence to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He was not yet declared factually innocent. And in the meantime, imagine having to explain the 20-plus year gap in your job history or the results of your background check.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
I still get panicky going through background checks today or when going through customs while traveling internationally because there is often no box to check that says convicted of a crime but actually innocent. You always have to explain. So you can imagine how much getting that legal vindication matters for someone like Ian.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
things could be so much worse. Thankfully, prosecutors are not seeking to retry Ian for this same crime. But a hearing to declare him factually innocent would take time. And until then, he remains merely not guilty. For Sean, since he took a plea deal, he's still considered guilty in the eyes of the law. And in October of 2023, it's Sean's turn before the magistrate.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
A mailbox or a key can take on magical significance. A crowd waiting for a bus can become terrifyingly claustrophobic.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Attorney Keith Shigatomi takes the floor to dive into the case, explaining that Sean made the difficult decision to plead guilty to avoid a possible lifetime in prison despite evidence of his innocence. Now, Sean is seeking to withdraw his plea and clear his name. A modern jury would likely acquit him based on the evidence presented.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Having been convicted in 2000, Ian was sentenced to life behind bars at the start of the new millennium, just a year before the first iPod was released, and nearly a decade before social media platforms like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter transformed the way we communicate. Even in 2011, when I was acquitted, I was baffled by touchscreens.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
Judge Kubota isn't blind to the looming risk of a gross miscarriage of justice in Sean's conviction, something he refers to as manifest injustice. He emphasizes the importance of a thorough and fair examination of all available evidence that brings true justice to light. And so officially, on October 23rd, 2023, Sean's conviction is reversed. Now, like his brother, he is officially not guilty.
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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6
But until they can both be declared factually innocent, that cloud of suspicion will remain. On their way out of the courtroom, Sean and Ian meet with the media.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
As the hearing continues, the looks at the defense table are hard to ignore, specifically from Sean and Ian. Sean is harder to read, maybe because of his years of needing to blend into society and not draw attention. Ian is harder to read,
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Ian is quiet and by no means causing a fuss, but if you could see him, you'd feel his pain, his frustration, his disappointment, and even anger at what the state, including prosecutor Shannon Kagawa, is still trying to say about him.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Even after 24 years in prison, even after Ian's charges were dropped, and even after someone else's DNA was connected to the case, they persist in searching for guilt that isn't there. I know exactly what that feels like. They found the real killer in my case, whose DNA was all over the crime scene, just two weeks after the murder and nearly a year before I even went to trial.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
It didn't matter then, and it doesn't matter today. A cloud of suspicion still hangs over me. To many, I'm still guilty until proven innocent. That is the look on Ian's face. The anxiety that he'll have to prove himself forever and ever. At the very least, I can point to Italy's Supreme Court, which declared me factually innocent. And Ian and Sean deserve the same.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
And it's not looking like they'll get what they deserve. But something interesting comes up during this hearing that surprises a lot of us, including the judge. Bill Harrison and Keith Shigatomi both speak to conversations they had with Michael Ortiz, the jailhouse informant, a.k.a. the prison priest, whose testimony led to the second indictment and Ian and Sean's convictions.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
And Judge Kubota continually proves to do just that. He often responds with critical questions to the state's argument that ongoing investigations justify withholding evidence, especially since Laurel's DNA has been confirmed and he is now deceased.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Just note that that's a serious allegation of misconduct. It's not just that the testimony came from a jailhouse snitch who was incentivized to lie, but that the police fed him the story they wanted him to repeat.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Dr. Richard Leo, by the way, is a friend of mine and a renowned expert in police coercion and confessions. And he's prominently featured in another podcast series I made called False Confessions, which you can find linked in the show notes.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
As part of her own investigation into this case, award-winning investigative journalist Lynn Kawano is able to find the polygraph report and review it firsthand.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
By the end of the hearing, the team is on the edge of their seats, trying to predict how this judge, who decided to release Ian at the end of his last hearing with zero expectation to do so, will react to all of this information.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
I hope you're beginning to see how damning a false admission can be. Even when contradicted by DNA, prosecutors, juries, and even judges have a hard time ignoring such evidence.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
In one study conducted by false confessions expert Dr. Saul Kassin, judges were presented with several mock trial scenarios, and even when they were given conditions in which two-thirds of judges ruled to suppress the confession evidence as inadmissible, they still voted guilty 69% of the time, compared to a baseline of 17% in the neutral condition.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
False admissions and confessions are that powerful in their biasing effect. The question is, will Judge Kubota be able to see those admissions for what they are, unreliable and irrelevant to the factual innocence of the Schweitzer brothers?
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
At the end of the July 2024 hearing, the judge decides to schedule another hearing where he will determine if the Hawaii Police Department would be required to release the information they have from their interview with Albert Laurel Jr. and what they have potentially uncovered since.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Then, only a month later, in August, Judge Kubota calls everyone back together and tells the state they not only can't keep the evidence they have secret, he demands they release it in a couple of days. That's next in Chapter 10, which you can listen to next week.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
I'm Amanda Knox, and this is Three. Three. Let me reiterate what you just heard. Prosecutor Shannon Kagawa is stating a theory in their case that despite everything they have learned up till this point, they can't confidently say that the Schweitzer's and Frank Pauline Jr. weren't involved in Dana's murder.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Randy Roth of the Hawaii Innocence Project attended the hearing alongside members of our team and witnessed these arguments firsthand.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
You want to believe that our justice system is just, that it always prioritizes the truth over the egos and reputations of the flawed humans who carry it out. But all too often, it doesn't. When I was first accused, I had assumed that the courtroom was like a scientific laboratory, where lots of contradictory evidence was sifted and analyzed and boiled down to truth beyond a reasonable doubt.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
It was a painful discovery to learn how naive that was, that the courtroom is more like a battleground of storytelling, where the most compelling and not necessarily the most truthful story wins." In the wake of my wrongful conviction, I wanted to understand how the authorities could have gotten it so wrong.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
And that led me to connect with other wrongly convicted people, to see the patterns and to study the cognitive biases that lead well-intentioned people to commit grievous harm, all the while thinking they are delivering justice. One of those biases is referred to by social psychologists as the just world fallacy.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
We all have a tendency to think that there is a moral balance to the universe, that good things happen to good people, and if bad things happen to a person, they must have had it coming. It's no wonder that so many of us can fall asleep at night confident that our prisons are full of bad guys and only bad guys.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Accepting the truth is uncomfortable and unsettling, and the truth is that the system gets it wrong far too often, and that prosecutors will pursue bogus cases long after the evidence is clear, all to protect their conviction rate and to avoid admitting fault. After all, they're human, and nobody likes to be wrong, especially when the stakes are so high.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
In late 2023, the National Institute of Justice released a report called The Impact of False or Misleading Forensic Evidence on Wrongful Convictions. We'll link this report out in the show notes, and I highly recommend you read it in full. But for now, consider this.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
By extrapolating from proven DNA wrongful convictions in the Innocence Project's database, it is estimated that 4 to 6 percent of people who are currently incarcerated are innocent, about 1 out of 20. And once you consider that there are close to 2 million people in our prisons and jails, that's potentially as many as 120,000 innocent people locked up.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
You could fill Madison Square Garden six times over with the wrongly convicted. No process is perfect. Whether that's cancer diagnosis or automobile manufacturing, errors are inevitable. But what rate of error should we accept when people's lives are at stake? One in 20 seems far too high.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Faulty forensic science. Nearly all of these factors played a role in my case, and the same is true of the Schweitzer's. The whole case began with perjured testimony and eyewitness misidentification. Sean gave a false confession, both brothers had inadequate defense, and the prosecution leaned on junk science like bite mark analysis. But the most troubling factor of all is official misconduct.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
This makes me want to scream. But at this point, nothing about the state's actions would surprise Ian or Sean. They've become numb to the antics they are willing to pull to stay squeaky clean.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
As you heard last episode, Ken Lawson suspects that the police were just fine running the risk that Albert Laurel Jr. would kill himself if not arrested because taking his secrets to the grave would be less embarrassing for them, and it would allow the prosecution to maintain that the Schweitzer brothers were still possibly involved. But official misconduct is a serious allegation.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
When we spoke with Chief Moskowitz, he shared what their intentions have been since identifying Albert Laurel Jr.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Nonetheless, during the hearing, proving why this happened wasn't the goal. The goal was to answer how this happened and what needs to be done to make things right. Tuning in virtually, Barry Sheck, co-founder of the Original Innocence Project, takes the floor and sets the stage for the defense's argument.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Bill Harrison, representing Ian Schweitzer, focuses his argument on law enforcement's conduct or lack thereof, while also touching on the DNA evidence, the flawed witness testimonies and the lack of physical evidence.
THREE
Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Okay, so here is what Bill Harrison is talking about. According to the Hawaii Innocence Project, the Hawaii PD have a video recording of their interview with Albert Laurel Jr. and an FBI agent was present during it.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
And the Hawaii Innocence Project wants to get their eyes on it because it may shed light on the way previous interviews had been handled during Ian and Sean's second indictment and maybe reveal some wheeling and dealing that was happening behind the scenes. Thank you.
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Factual Innocence | Chapter 9
Throughout the hearing, the judge interjects and pushes back, specifically questioning the prosecution's logic. It's deeply uncomfortable to watch a representative of the state take such a righteous stance and dismiss the opportunity to grant actual innocence. But from the beginning, the defense team has hoped the judge they were given would truly listen and rule in an unbiased way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I'm so grateful that I did not have a fucked up childhood.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Indeed. I feel like if I had gone through this experience after having a fucked up childhood, I would be a psychopath.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I agree. I think in large part because how do you trust... I think rebuilding your life relies upon rebuilding yourself in the context of other human beings. And how do you do that when you can't trust anyone?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
No, I wanted it to be my actual handwriting. Why didn't they use it? Fuckheads. They should have used it. Because they were like, this looks so much more pretty.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Especially when there's no inherent meaning. You just have to make it up. I think.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, that's actually been a really sort of fun takeaway that I've had from having just an Instagram is like I'll post a silly video of me dancing for my kids. And a lot of the comments are just people being like, I'm so glad that someone like you can be happy. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
You know, it's like, thank God someone like you can be happy. And I'm like, yeah, someone like me can be happy. That means you can be happy, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
uh where it sort of pinged all of the buttons in all the right places this happened in 2007 so you know early 2000s when the internet was or the internet the social media was really becoming a thing the iphone was becoming a thing i think that that played a huge role of people sort of going into their little echo chambers and fighting online and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. But but in terms of your of like trying to take beautiful women down a peg, I think you're right. I also think that something that was going on in my case that I think you also tend to see in those situations where you're trying to take beautiful men down a peg is. is this idea of pitting women against each other.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And the motivation has to be that you have to see some kernel of opportunity embedded within that darkness. Because otherwise, how do you even know what direction to go towards?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Even though it's hard. Yes. And because it's hard. Hard can be fun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
We should work out some time, by the way. I think that would be fun. I only studied fighting when I first got back out of prison because I was getting a bunch of death threats. So I did Krav Maga. And a lot of it was just learning how to scream.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, well, the first like my Krav Maga instructors, because they were instructing me on a specific for a specific reason wasn't just to work out their first thing that they taught me was how to scream just to like without without holding back the amount like I was surprised and they were telling me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
People don't want to take up space and take and make noise like we're we're taught from a very young age, especially women to not do that. And so you have to in the first the first lesson was make noise, take up space. And and so we just practiced like screaming as loud and as hard and as long as we could. And then once we got through that, then we started doing the fighting moves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
That was a huge thing in my case where they were suggesting that here I was, this free-spirited but also hoary American girl, versus the uptight, judgmental British girl. And therefore they hated each other and with, you know, with a vengeance, with a lethal vengeance.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And the first thing I had to do before I did anything was scream first, then move, scream, move. And so that the screaming became part of the the movement. So it would trigger. So I wouldn't have to think about it if it ever came down to it. And someone actually attacked me. I wouldn't have to think scream. I would just scream.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like how often are you going to encounter trained killers?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
OK, here's a question. Can I ever actually defend myself against someone like you?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But you're saying I should train to be able to fight against trained killers, but... Yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I feel like people just don't remember what animals are like. We're so out of touch with animals.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And also your own dog could fuck you up if it wanted to. It just doesn't want to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Or if he got infected by rabies. Right. You know, like and lost his mind. Right. Like, ciao.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And then this idea of like a murder orgy appeared where this pornographic fantasy of women like expressing their own violent fantasies towards each other real life and using men as pawns in that game of violent hatred towards each other. I think you see that a lot, you know, even in like a person I write about in this book who's become a dear friend of mine is Monica Lewinsky. And
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But don't you fight differently against a trained killer versus some dude who's drunk in a bar?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And it's happening so quickly that the only way that you can actually be effective is if you're fluent and you don't have to think about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Do you think that fighting and, you know, fighting your friends, like not like actual like fighting for your life, but fighting for your friends is a crucial part of brain development? Because I know that I've heard or at least I've read that rough housing with small kids is a really important thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
part of their brain development and and the the people who become more um well adapted well adjusted emotionally just they seem to be more fit emotionally were kids who had some roughhousing when they were when they were young especially with their parents is that is that like an elevated form of roughhousing part of a human being's cognitive development
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Because I'm not like, I'm not a fighter. I don't like, I've never gotten to a physical fight with anyone.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Maybe this is why I feel bad for men because I don't feel any sort of impulse to do that, to puff up my chest and like, I don't know, maybe is it- Well, you shouldn't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
How I feel like people really wanted to bring her down a peg in part because they wanted to bring Hillary down a peg and the whole like purse the person who actually committed the affair was sort of I mean he definitely got his part but it was all like a political game of they're trying to take down the man but they're also taking down the woman and they're especially railroading this young woman who made a mistake.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Okay. I guess my one sort of poke back at that, though, is I find it interesting that you frame vulnerability in such a negative way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah. But I think the thing that I'm sort of thinking about is how it doesn't matter really how strong you are or capable you are. We all are still utterly vulnerable. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, I guess, no, I guess my thing is, for me, it's less about like... like positioning myself to not get hurt. And it's more for me, my big sort of like training that I attempt to do is how do I get up when I am inevitably hurt? So I understand that life is going to hurt me and I don't know how life is going to hurt me. So there's like a million different ways that I can be hurt.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
It might be that I'm physically assaulted. It might be some other thing. And knowing that I can't prepare for all of the ways that I am vulnerable to existence. Instead, I try to think, OK, I am vulnerable to existence now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
and i am going to get hurt how do i not be broken by the hurt and how do i i don't know maybe i'm i'm i'm treating the inevitable pain of life as that as that training to get strong it's just kind of i i almost don't seek out pain because i've had enough pain come at me is that does that make sense i don't know what do you mean by seek out pain though
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right. And like to an extent, I agree with you because that's a very stoic thing to do, to seek out challenges so that you can you can test yourself and test your mettle and push yourself to become better for the inevitable things that might happen.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I think maybe this is another like woman-man thing maybe where like women have to accept vulnerability as like an inescapable aspect of our lives, even just in our interpersonal relationships. Like I know that when I walk into the room, I'm... Not the one who's going to win a fight, that's for sure. Right. And so knowing that, I feel like I... Sure, I prepare myself in the ways that I can, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And it became known as the Monica Lewinsky scandal and not, you know, the Bill Clinton affair or whatever. Like it matters what you name a thing. And it seemed like the legacy of that and the person who became defined entirely by that scandal happened to be Monica, the one who was the person with the least amount of power and agency in that equation. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I'm strong in the ways that I can. But I don't think about vulnerability... In negative terms, because I've also found that once you've been once you've been once you've been forced to reckon with your own vulnerability, that is when you find your strength. So I don't know. I see them as like interchangeable.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right. There's a reason why I wasn't the one who did that. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Who think themselves superior to people who are more vulnerable than them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Again, I'm also like speaking at counter purposes with myself because I did the exact opposite thing with my prosecutor. I didn't have to talk to him. I didn't have to have a conversation with him that was difficult and awkward and hard and forced me to confront all of this pain. Right. And I did because I knew that there was value in that. Right. So.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But I don't know. Maybe I'm a masochist because I always feel like there's something to gain from pain.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, 23 years old. Yeah. Who did a very normal thing, which was fall in love with a charismatic, powerful man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I trust pain more than I trust joy. Because when I'm going through something painful, I know what that is and I know how to confront it. When I'm going through joy, I'm afraid that something bad is going to happen to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so like, I don't know, like a part of me is like always is trying to see like the yin yang of it all, like the good that's embedded in the bad, but then afraid of the bad that's embedded in the good. Like that's what... And, you know, and that's a reality.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, you know, the more that you now that I have the privilege of being a mom, I know that one day, you know, like if something were to happen to my kids, I would be all the more fucking dead, like all the more pain in my life. Like if I'd never had kids, I wouldn't I wouldn't have the opportunity to experience a potential pain that would be utterly devastating. And so like that's devastating.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
That's where that play goes in my head. And I just wonder if it's a trauma response where like I'm afraid of good things happening.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
He was the president of the United States. He was charismatic. He was handsome. He showered her with attention. And it makes sense that a young, inexperienced person would fall in love with him. And yet she was the one who got railroaded. She was the homewrecker. She was the one who became the subject of all the rap lyrics.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, that whole, like, lightning doesn't strike the same place twice, and it's like... It can.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Does he put those shoes on because he knows that ultimately he's going to be glad that he did it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And her entire life and her entire identity became identified with this mistake she had made. And that was not the same thing with the president of the United States. And I think that that impulse to define women by their worst moments and to tear them down for their worst moments is prevalent from what I have seen.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Now, everyone, if there's anything I've learned from being a mom, it's that everyone, every human being is a toddler. Every single person is a toddler who either hasn't gotten enough attention or hasn't had their nap, whatever the fuck. And they're just having a tantrum like that is. And if you treat everyone like a toddler, it is actually a very successful way of interacting with people. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And he still is a baby. He still has the same needs that he did as a kid. They're just more sophisticated now. But ultimately, they all derive down to these same things. Do you need a change of situation? Do you need some attention? Do you need to sleep on it? Whatever's going on. If you can identify those basic human needs and just tweak their circumstances, you can change a person's life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And they're going to lose their shit in the middle of the grocery store. Yay!
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, if anyone wants to reach out, I'm at amandanox.com. It's pretty easy. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like schadenfreude, just as an audience, like we want a story, we want a real life story where we get to, you know, passively enjoy the destruction of another human being.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
No. And that's what's fascinating. It worked to destroy Monica.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
So I think that there was, yeah, it was a case that for whatever reason rose above the level of other cases. Ultimately, this case was actually very simple and it wouldn't have risen to the level of international infamy were it not for the series of mistakes that the prosecution and the detectives made at the very beginning by trying to pin a man's crime on me, a woman.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, and then you have to spend the rest of your life with secret service following you around so you can't exist in the world as a normal human being. I do feel like you have to be a special kind of person in order to be attracted to something like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
So is democracy completely and utterly flawed because it relies upon the ambition of the wrong people?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But does anyone ever like actually arrive at the like at the seat of the president as that person?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Okay. So this story didn't actually make it in my book, but it is one that I wanted to tell you because it talks about how my weird relationship with other people who are in positions of power, like police officers, right? I'm an advocate of criminal justice reform. I talk a lot about, I go and testify in front of my state Congress trying to get
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Certain laws passed to protect, you know, innocent people. And one thing that I like to point out is that I'm not anti law enforcement. If anything, I was a victim of crime before I became a victim of the criminal justice system. Like someone broke into my home and raped and murdered my roommate. And then I called the cops.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
and then the cops went on to betray me and but that doesn't mean that there isn't like i'm not one of those you know fuck all the police we don't need them you know abolish the whole system that's not what i believe um but as someone who has had this complicated experience with police um I don't really know what to do when something bad goes down.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I want to tell you a story about something bad that went down. It was in LA. I was staying at a friend's house with my husband and our two kids. We were doing work down there. And our friends were not there. But in the middle of the night, we hear someone yelling out in the street. We think there's some drunk guy out there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yes, there's a Netflix documentary. I wrote a book called Waiting to be Heard. And then more recently, I wrote this book, Free My Search for Meaning, which covers like, you know, you can read it and learn about the case, but it's mostly about how do you come out of an experience like that and make sense of it? And then...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But it gets closer and closer and closer until finally there is a huge bang. And my husband gets up in his tighty-whities. And says one thing to me, call the police before he marches downstairs. We were upstairs in the second story and we hear a bang. We hear yelling. He goes down there in his underwear.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I don't know if the last thing I'm ever going to hear from my husband at that point is call the police, which is... And interesting final words to get from the love of your life when you're me. And my infant son is crying. My two-year-old daughter at the time is going, what's going on?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I'm trying to calm him while reassure her while looking around the room thinking, how do I barricade a door? And can I jump out of a window with two small children? All of that before I think dial 9-1-1, because the last time that I dialed the equivalent of 9-1-1 to call for help, I got thrown into prison. I realize that there's nothing I can do to protect my kids, so I call 9-1-1.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And eventually, you know, my husband is able to get this intruder to leave the house. The police arrive and I have a very strange encounter with them because they are very nice to me. And I was not expecting that. And they are very nice to my daughter. And they give her a nice little, you know, police badge. And I'm sitting here thinking, great, now I'm going to have to throw a police badge.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Themed birthday party for her because now she's going to be super into police. And I'm just like, what is happening to my life? And I'm scared that they're going to recognize me. And I'm scared they're going to think maybe she faked a break in like all of that is going on in my head. And I don't know how to resolve that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
You know, somebody broke into my home once, murdered my roommate, broke into the place I was staying again, thankfully didn't murder anybody. But how do I make sense of my relationship with people who are empowered to protect me, but also are empowered to hurt me? What do I do about that? You tell me, Joe. What do I do?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
One of the big stories in it is how I then developed a relationship with my prosecutor, which I think you'll probably be in the camp of people of thinking that I'm utterly insane for having done that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
The yelling was he was just schizophrenic. Yeah. He he thought that he someone had stole that house from him and he was yelling for some name of a person who didn't live there. Clearly was just like either confused or mentally ill in some capacity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Um, but, and thankfully not armed, but like my husband didn't know when he walked down the stairs in his underwear without any, any, like he grabbed a broom on his way down and that was, he was between putting himself and a broom between whoever this person was who had just kicked in the front door through the deadbolt and his family. Um,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And that might have been the last time I ever saw him, you know? And I did not know what to do. I try to like joke about it now where I actually did a standup bit about it a while back about how I was like testing my butt to see if it was bouncy enough to like jump out of the window and bounce. But like, I, when I think back on it, it's just, it's still scary, you know? Um,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I don't like how I feel right now that when I'm scared, I'm supposed to call the police, but I'm also scared to call the police.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so, you know, when I go and do advocacy work for, you know, I'm now on the board of an organization called the Innocence Center, InnocenceCenter.org, which, by the way, just got a bunch of federal funding taken away. Thanks, Elon. You'd think that they would be interested in supporting organizations that clean up the messes of the criminal justice system, but apparently not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I mean, there's a federal funding that is designed for innocence organizations. And I think what I heard is that there are certain words that sort of became taboo within the administration that That if you were using these words or these terminologies that they associate with like DEI, that then there that sort of puts you on the list of being cut for federal funding.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I just remember that when we talked about this back in the day, you were like this motherfucker.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And one of those words was like the word fair. And in a organization that is interested in justice and for in getting innocent people out of prison, the word fair is going to come up quite a bit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah. I mean, I think that that's a first step is they'll just use this – they're going to use algorithms and AI to help them identify potential things to cut. And I think as a new innocence organization, we were considered not worthy of – the federal funding that we have relied on and to help innocent people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Me? No, I'm on the board. You're on the board. But yes, this is formerly the California Innocence Project that has since sort of turned into the Innocence Center. But you're seeing this all across the board of innocence projects of getting their federal funding taken away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Nope. Just it's deprioritized because I think we're considered leftist organizations potentially. I don't know. But I know that like. I have always thought that innocence and justice were bipartisan issues. And I thought that we had been making great strides in sort of welcoming in both liberal and conservative partners in this ongoing fight.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Friend is an interesting word. What is a friend? Someone else asked me that. I was like, it depends on what you mean by friend. And they said, well, do you trust him? And I said, well... I think that at the point that we are now in our relationship, I do trust him. I trust that he's telling me the truth about what he really thinks and feels about the situation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But because these things disproportionately impact people of color, you're going to see language around that that acknowledges that fact. And I think that that has been sort of put in... Innocence organizations are now being put into DEI camps and we're being stripped of funding. And I think that that's...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I hope that that's an oversight issue and that they're going to recognize the mistake that they're making.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But as it stands right now, innocence organizations, not just the one that I'm associated with, are scrambling to get the funding that they were promised to continue doing, you know, doing the things that cost money, like filing, you know, filing all of their work and going through all of the casework and doing the DNA tests and doing investigations to see if you can reach the witnesses that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
that maybe have changed their stories in all these years. It takes a lot of money and resources to prove a person's innocence. You have to reinvestigate a case, and we don't have the funding that we used to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so I mean, I would have thought that that would have been of interest to Trump considering it's a baby with the bathwater type deal. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right. Are innocent people the price of us getting to be efficient?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I think we're we're brushing up against right now. And and as someone who really is like just interested in keeping especially this issue, like this is a human like we all we all should be on the same side about this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Why? Like, why is it being turned into this a left or right issue?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
That would be great. And if you need to put me in contact, I would be happy to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
So I feel like I have very privileged, special access to the mind of the person who put me in prison. And that is a very interesting thing. Awkward, but also empowering place for me to be because one of the things that really bothered me about this experience was not understanding why it happened to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yes the adversarial system It's like I have to be I have to win this side and I cannot at all Like acknowledge some truth that might be to the other side like I
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, their job is to make the government prove your guilt. Right. That's what a technically a defense attorney who's really good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Although I have talked to some really interesting defense attorneys. The defense attorneys represented Larry Nassar, for example. famously for those who don't remember was molesting young gymnasts you remember him yeah yeah and I interviewed them because it was two women who represented him and so a lot of people were like how dare you represent this man as a woman how could you and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And their position was, well, we didn't represent him to prove him innocent. We had him plead guilty to these crimes. We just feel that everyone deserves to have a defender. We're defenders. We represent people in the law. And they were getting demonized for even taking him on as a client. And I thought that was interesting because they weren't trying to get him off.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
They were just trying to have to represent due process. And I felt like that was a really interesting case of people confusing the what what is the role of a defense attorney. And I think you're right. Like some defense attorneys really don't care. If their clients are guilty or innocent because they are also in this adversarial system.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so they are also in this position of just wanting to win and wanting to make the lives of law enforcement difficult. And they're willing to throw victims under the bus in the process. Like I've had really frank conversations with people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
with friends of mine in the innocence world where they talk about how they were trained to just destroy a victim in order to diminish their credibility in court and to really put them in a really bad position so they didn't want to pursue justice for themselves. And they look back and go, oh, my God, I can't believe that that's how I was trained to be a defense attorney.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, that whole question of what does it mean to be free and what, you know, yes, there's the physical, like, oh, you're out of prison, but then also is your life the thing that you expected it to be and how do you make your own freedom when you feel hemmed in by all of the things that happen to you, so...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But like that was just part of the game. And I think that's where this whole course of justice gets completely distorted because it's like, well, what is the what is the point of all of this? Like it should be about like arriving at the truth and then doing and then having there be like some recognized consequences for acknowledging what really happened.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like we need to address the issue, which is somebody got hurt by someone else. What do we do now? What? And instead, it's become, well, I'm going to win. Like, I'm on this team. You're on this team. Fight, fight, fight. Let's see who wins. And as a result, the whole issue of truth gets distorted and becomes about making the best story that captures the people's attention. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I think, I mean, that was a huge lesson for me, was realizing that, like, the truth didn't matter. Like, nobody cared about the truth. They cared about the story. And was it a story that spoke to them? And was it a story that lingered for them? And that's, you know, an ongoing thing that I write about is like, okay, here's this crazy story that is not true, that took over my life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And that still has this huge role. Like I'm still in conversation with that crazy story that was written about me. And and the fact that like my entire identity is now wrapped up in the death of my friend that I had nothing to do with. And I'll forever be defined by it because it's such a captivating story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Why did this man look at a 20 year old girl with no criminal history, no motivation to commit this crime? Why did he look at me and think there's my rapist and murderer? And I didn't understand it. And I didn't feel like demonizing him in my mind or vilifying him in my mind was going to actually give me a satisfying answer as to the why of it all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
What he says, and it's very – again, it goes back to like what are we telling ourselves and what is the cognitive bias? And I think this is where it gets super interesting because winning – is interpreted in some people's minds as doing their duty, right? Like the way that my prosecutor has always talked about it with me is that he maintains that he was doing his duty. This was his job.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
His job was to make a case that made logical sense to him based upon certain premises and And then to win that case in court. That was his job. That was his duty. And he believes that he was doing the right thing because that's what he was trained and incentivized to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
In the same way that like, you know, journalists, if you ask journalists back who covered the case back in the day, they'll be like, well, we were doing our job. Our job was to sell the best story that we could to our audience. And right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so that's when it gets like fucked up because like how how have our institutions that we've relied on to be truth seeking institutions been corrupted from the inside by media? What is a question of like money or or power when politics gets brought into the equation with criminal justice?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Suddenly, you know, your prosecutor is now wanting to win cases, not because they're the right cases to win, but because they want to be elected. Like all of that gets distorted and and the motivations behind all our institutions become warped.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right. That's it. Right. And then they hold then they hold the audience accountable for the kinds of stories that they are then incentivized to write. They say, well, you know, I wouldn't been writing this story if you weren't clicking on it. And this was like this vicious cycle. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But like that's how if you're in that little echo chamber of a system and that's what your reward structure is, of course, that's what you're going to end up delivering. If you're somebody who's not who doesn't have the introspection to question like, OK, wait, what am I doing and what is the point of all of this? And do you have certain principles?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But again, the people who rise to the top are maybe the ones who are willing to question those principles in order to achieve certain ends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And maybe the person who's on the ground has a certain vision for what they want their like on the ground reporting to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But then once it gets in the hands of editors and other editors, like it becomes completely warped from the thing that they were originally reporting on because the person who's over here is so divorced from the actual on the ground story and they know instead the story that's going to sell.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
A lot of people said, well, it's just because he's a bad dude. He doesn't care what the truth is. He's just covering his ass. Like these were all really simplistic ways of framing his motivations. And I didn't really buy them. So instead, what I was interested in was going to the source and confronting him. asking why.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And that's why I was so mad that our party never actually gave us a choice.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
No, there was no primary. They were just like, here's the person now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right. A little bit of like self brainwashing. And that fascinates me. Like in conversations with my prosecutor, how how has he convinced himself that he's the good guy? And and how has that changed when I have approached him not as an adversary, but as someone who is a.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I wouldn't say like tolerant because I've never put myself in a position of sort of saying, oh, what you did was not a big deal. Like when I approached him, I was like, what you did was a big deal and you were wrong and you hurt people. But like acknowledging his humanity and the complexity of him and acknowledging that like he's not an evil person.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
If that's not evil... I mean, what he did, it's interesting. He wrote a whole book about the case, and he talked about how when he first arrived at the scene, he immediately knew that it was a conspiracy because he looked at the broken window, how the person had actually broken into our home, and said... There's no way, zero chance that a burglar would have broken into a house this way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
He just was like 100 percent convinced that immediately that the break in was staged. And if you take that, if you and your brain truly believe that. Then what logically follows is a lot of what he then came up with. Well, someone in the house is trying to cover up for a crime that they were involved in. Who lives in that house?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But to ask someone, why did you hurt me, which I think is a really common thing that people who have been hurt want to know is they want an acknowledgement that they've been hurt and they want to understand why and they they want to know if that person is not going to hurt them anymore or not going to hurt other people like that's really common for people who have been hurt.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, there are three other girls, one of whom was in Rome, one of whom is another Italian girl who was with her boyfriend and friends, and one of whom is the American girl. who was with her boyfriend that night, but who also happened to be the one who called the police and brought attention to the house.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
So maybe because we found her at the scene of the crime, like all of it sort of starts to like make logical sense if you begin with a false premise.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I mean, he makes logical leaps. So he goes, OK, well, then we discovered that, you know, all of this DNA of the person who actually committed the crime, right? Like, you know, they finally get the DNA back and it's all pointing to this guy who has a history of breaking and entering and aggression towards women. And he doesn't go, oh, no, we made a mistake.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
He goes, oh, how can now he be involved in this thing that I know Amanda's involved in because I know the break-in was staged? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And, you know, like so these the this is how a person with good with genuinely good intentions can can have false beliefs that then logic from which one can logically derive an insane story that requires like him to now believe like one of the things that I pointed out to him that just like drives me nuts that he continues to like.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Somehow hang on to is this idea that I was in a threesome with like I was in a three way relationship with my actual boyfriend Raffaele and this burglar Rudy Gaudet and I was like where are you coming up with that and he was like well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
whenever I interviewed Rudy, like he talks about interviewing, you know, interrogating Rudy, Rudy always seemed to have affectionate things to say about, he always seemed to like be interested in you. And from that, I can logically deduce that you guys had a relationship. And I was like, we, we, Like, I didn't even know his name. There's no record of us ever communicating with each other.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
No one ever, like, saw us hanging out with each other. Like, what are you talking about? And he's like, well, if he was involved in the crime and you're involved in the crime and he's sort of talking about, you know, you in an affectionate way, then logically it makes sense that you were in this, you know, three way relationship with Raphael and Rudy. And I'm like, that's not true.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And he's like, well, that's what it's that's what made logical sense to me at the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
It's certainly someone who has a belief and a confidence in their own abilities as a logical thinker. And I think anyone who is in that kind of position has to believe in themselves in that kind of way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
The challenge is that people who hurt other people don't like to be confronted with that fact. And so how do you start a conversation that's not going to immediately become adversarial? And that was one of my biggest challenges. But I came up with this methodology that actually became so important to me that I tattooed it on my arm. So this is it. There are four steps.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, certainly. Is he still working as a prosecutor? No, no, he's retired. He has retired. He should be in jail. Like, literally. I do not wish jail upon him. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, I would have to say that I agree that there's I always wanted to I always wondered where the adults were in the room. Like, you know, the whole first two years of my imprisonment, I was like, this is all a huge mistake. And it's really obviously a huge mistake. And when are when are like the mommies and daddies going to show up and say, OK, kids, stop your squabbling.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
There are no mommies and daddies. That's the thing that freaked me out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
It's like we're all adults now and this is all we are. We're just a bunch of screaming toddlers just screaming at each other constantly. And here I am now. I feel in a way trying to mother my prosecutor through his, you know, psychological tantrums. Which is a weird position to be in. Because now that I've developed the relationship that I've developed with him, I like I care about him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, I don't think that you can. I set out to understand him. I wanted to understand him. But in the process of like really understanding a human being and having them like be really open to you. I don't know. I feel like you inevitably begin to care about this person, even in their, you know, flawed fragility as a human being. And so on the one hand, I'm very angry at him to this day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And on the other hand, I care about him and I have to give him. some props he didn't have to respond to me he didn't have to meet with me he didn't have to sit there and hear me talk about how he had up my life and he shouldn't have I did not like it's not that like me being kind to him does not mean me tolerating injustice. And it does not mean me not setting boundaries.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And it does not mean me sugarcoating what really happened. Like he knows what I think really happened. And he says, well. You know, we can disagree about our perspectives in some in some ways. But ultimately, what matters is that you reached out to me and saw me as a human being. And in response, I like I also inevitably came to see you as a human being and I care about you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And the first one is find common ground. So it's this Venn diagram. Find common ground. I promise you that every single person on this earth, you have something in common with them. Find it. So I asked myself, what could I and my prosecutor have in common? I didn't know this man. I didn't know what his history was, what his background was.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so in a way, we're still in this awkward dance of one part of us is stuck in that adversarial system and one part of us is in a non-adversarial, very accepting of all the things space. And we're paradoxically existing in both of them at the same time. And I think that that's just kind of how life is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, you know, one of the paradoxes of life is that, like, if you really just sit down and sit with yourself and your life just the way it is right now, if you really do just like notice right now, you and me, here we are talking. We are OK. You and me, we are good. And also, there's still fucked up shit in my life and there's still fucked up shit in your life. And and things could be better.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And all of those things can be true at the same time. Like, you know, I'm still fighting to clear my name in Italy. I don't know if you have you kept up with like the latest with my case. Oh, yeah. So still. So I've been cleared of like all the crazy, you know, horrible murder orgy, all of that stuff cleared.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
The thing that remains and this is just the bane of my fucking existence is when they cleared me of having anything to do with the crime, they left open the possibility that I was present when the crime occurred. And I believe the reason that they did this was because they wanted to find me guilty of something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And the thing that they found me guilty of was the way lesser crime on the list of all the crimes that were there, which was slander. They accused me of knowingly and willingly falsely accusing an innocent person of having committed this crime. Because during my interrogation, I was coerced into implicating myself and my boss, Patrick Lumumba, of murdering. of committing this crime.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I immediately retracted it, all of that. But that was one of the things that they were holding me accountable for. And they, to this day, I am still convicted in Italy of knowingly and willingly accusing an innocent man. And for me to knowingly and willingly accuse this innocent man, I would have to have been at the house and known who really was the murderer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
At the moment that I falsely accused this innocent person, like I would have had to know that he was definitively innocent for this to be the case. And for that to be true, I would have to be physically present at the crime, even if I was not participating in it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
So the legal standing right now to this day is that I was there and that when I was interrogated, I knowingly and falsely accused an innocent person. I appealed this, by the way, to the European Court of Human Rights, and they ruled in my favor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
They said that because I had been denied the right to have an attorney and an interpreter when I was being interrogated, that none of that should ever have been – I should never have been convicted of that. And I took that back to Italy. I took that ruling back to Italy, and they overturned it. I was actually acquitted of that for a second, but then sent back for retrial recently, and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And recently, yeah, this is 18 years later, recently was put back on trial for that. This was last year. And I was found guilty again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But I did know that he, like me, was part of this really big group. scandalous in the media case. And he very likely felt misconstrued or misrepresented also in the process, maybe dehumanized in the process. And so I reached out to him and I acknowledged that fact. I said, hey, I don't know who you are. I only ever encountered you in the police office and in the courtroom where you were
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
On the basis not even of the statements that the police like coerced me into signing, but on my retraction. So I hand wrote a retraction of those statements that the police coursed me into signing. And I was like, I'm so confused. I can't testify. Like, I don't know if Patrick did it or not. Like, I just don't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And they said, well, even a confused statement where you're not sure what the truth is, if you were physically present at the crime is is slander. And you falsely accused an innocent man that you knew to be innocent. And so. But they have no proof that you were there. Exactly. Exactly. So we're in this like cyclical thing where they just don't want to admit that they fucked up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
That's what I think. And I'm at this point where I'm like, OK, now what? Because I'm definitively convicted of this thing. And like the legal truth in this case does not represent the actual truth in this case.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Maybe. I think even more than that, I think they're trying to protect themselves from admitting that they tortured an innocent girl.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so it's not crazy for us to think that she might have been involved in the murder because here she is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And all they were ever able to do is prove that I lived in the house that this happened in. Like, sure, my DNA is in my house. It's not anywhere near Meredith's body or where the crime occurred. But they're saying that like I was there and it's sort of this like cyclical sort of reasoning. Like Amanda said she was there. Therefore, she was there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Therefore, she said she was, you know, like this is like insane cyclical reasoning. And I'm at the point where I have to ask myself, like, how do I fight this? And if so, do I? And that's where this whole question of freedom comes in. Like. do I have to definitively prove my innocence in a court of law to feel that I have definitively proven my innocence?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Or do I need to definitively prove my innocence in the court of public opinion in order to feel free or to feel like I'm not, regardless of whether I definitively prove my innocence or not, am I ever going to be free of this? Is this ever going to be not touching me and impacting my life? And the answer that I've come to,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
is well no in the way that like any of our experiences have come to define us as human beings and in a way it's like another way of reframing this is okay these are my credentials now like I went to the I didn't go to four years of master's degree in poetry I got a master's degree in Whatever this is being fucked. And so like and I've learned things from this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I've learned I've learned things about the criminal justice system. I like I can see things that need to be fixed that have are really common sense fixes to like. There is no reason why we shouldn't be just recording any kind of communication, like any time that anyone is being questioned by anyone in law enforcement. There's no reason why we shouldn't be recording it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I'm not talking about even just suspects, because like there's been a whole world of advocacy around like recording interrogations. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like custodial interrogations and especially making it so that police officers can't lie to you when you're being interrogated, because that was a huge thing that impacted me as like a young, confused, like overwhelmed human being as police lying to me and telling me that they have proof that I was there when the crime occurred. And it made me like. feel like I was insane.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so like the problem of police lying to you is not just that it's like a bullying technique, but it warps your sense of reality and you start to question yourself. And so there's psychological research to show that there are very negative consequences for police lying to you during interrogation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But at the very least, if you record it, you can sort of track how that is impacting a person who is being who is a suspect. The Wild West of all of this is eyewitnesses or anyone else who is being questioned by police because there's no Miranda rights. Like as a person who is being questioned by police, you don't really have. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like you don't you don't have like one of the things that they say in my case is that I never had the right to an attorney because I wasn't a suspect. I was a witness. And so like to this day in Italy, there's like this resistance to the idea that I was like coerced into.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
someone who was trying to ruin my life. So you were a big, scary boogeyman. And I saw you in the media, and I've seen how the media represented you. But knowing from experience, I know how that can be very misrepresentative. So I said to him, I want to know who you really are. And I hope that you might be interested to know who I really am, because I don't think you know who I really am.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I was that I was even interrogated at all because there's this like little loophole where they say, oh, you weren't interrogated. You were interviewed. Oh, you weren't interviewed. You were questioned. They just changed the language. But what's ultimately happening is the same thing. You are stuck in a room with a law enforcement officer who may or may not be lying to your face and bullying you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And you don't know if you're free or not to go because the door is closed and it doesn't feel like it. And so for me, I think that if you consider how many wrongful convictions happen because of misidentification by witnesses or the number of times that like witnesses say, well, I wasn't really sure that it was him, but the police sort of.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
coaxed me or pressured me into saying it was him and sort of made it known to me that it was him. Like there are lots of things that are happening behind closed doors that we really don't have an excuse for not fixing when every single one of us has a recording device in our pocket at all times.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And the amount of resistance to like getting just really common sense changes like that to happen from like law enforcement lobbies is just so frustrating as someone who like shows up again and again and again. to like try to make, because it seems like this adversarial thing, like we're all on the same side. It's not like victims' rights versus defendants' rights.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
It's not law enforcement versus, you know, innocence. It's like we're all on the same page. Why can't we just acknowledge a true thing? That's been one of my biggest frustrations in this world is like feeling like we should all be on the same side and we should be making common sense changes and that don't, you know,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But why doesn't, like, a law enforcement officer look at something that happened to me? Actually, you know what? I take that back. Plenty of law enforcement people have talked to me and said, like, we are so sorry for what happened to you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right. And no one gets rewarded for sticking their neck out or for holding their friends accountable. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And the feeling that you have to like in order to do the right thing, you just have to switch sides like that really bothers me. Also, because like one thing that I have I would love to see more of is more of like a collaboration between victims rights advocates and innocence rights advocates. But like oftentimes you see us sort of pitted against each other as if like, you know,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I've always felt that the criminal justice system never did enough for victims. That like the only compensation that victims are really given is the idea that you're going to punish the perpetrator. And I've always wanted to know how is the system going to help the victim rebuild their life and take back and like reclaim what can be reclaimed of their experience and be uplifted.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But like you're you're you're suing the person who committed the crime. And are you ever actually going to get any money from them?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I don't think that you would have prosecuted me if you knew who I really am. And that was the beginning of the dialogue. This like I went out of my way to acknowledge that he might have had noble motivations even if he was wrong. And I think this is like a really important thing is I wanted to give him radical benefit of the doubt.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
No, I don't think so. I think that people need more support than that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of the obstacles, the way kind of stuff. I mean, it's a lot of stuff that I write about in the book, actually, is one of the things that my goal with this book was to try to like, yes, what happened to me is like, oh, crazy story happened to a girl one time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But also there are like universal lessons and truths that I've derived from my experience that make me and when I communicate them, they make me feel less ostracized or less like. Singled out as a human being. And one of those is like there is opportunity in every tragedy. And I think that what my tragedy challenged me to do was to not be broken by it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And my definition of being broken by it was coming out of it. a person who was angry and embittered and diminished by this experience. And the rebellious side of me was like, fuck that. What matters to me? What matters to me is the truth and is compassion. Curiosity, compassion. Those are things that I genuinely care about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And having the courage to approach human beings and situations that are painful and and that are wrong with the open heart that it requires to have compassion and genuine curiosity. That is what I wanted to define me. I did not want this horrible experience to define me on its terms. I wanted to define me on my own terms. And I think the challenge that any one of us has
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
is remembering what even our terms are when we're feeling sort of overwhelmed with the existential crisis of it all. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they are stuck. They are fixated. They dwell on the life that they should have lived instead of
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
acknowledging and accepting that this is the life that they are living and when you are acting in the world as if you are living the life that you should have lived you are inevitably becoming ineffective
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like if I were to approach the world and be like, my prosecutor never should have done this to me and and my I never should have gone to prison and people should never should have villainized me in the press. I would just find myself debilitated, utterly debilitated by the fact that reality is other than that. And I would just find myself angry and and and and bitter about it all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And instead I go, well, all of that happened. Now what? And by accepting reality and life as it is, I can now become a more effective agent in my life. I don't want to live my life acting and feeling and thinking in ways that are not going to be effective. And so instead, what happens and the radical acceptance of it all is truly coming from a place of, I'm not trying to be Christian about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I'm just trying to like not be the completely and utterly overwhelmed and disempowered person that I was when I was in prison. Like I lost so much. I had so little control of my life. And I think in the end, all of us do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
maybe just maybe this like horrible thing that happened to me could have been the result of understandable mistakes and if anything i think coming into contact with the innocence movement and criminal justice system stuff and reform all the stuff that i've learned after having gone through this experience has made me realize that like some of the most horrible things can happen and can be enacted by people who have the best of intentions
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I feel like I weirdly had a midlife crisis when I was 20 because my entire life fell apart or I was on I was I was put on this this track, this train that just like left the station and was going on its own. And there was really nothing I could do to stop it. And so, OK, now what?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And he's also not in a vacuum. There were other people around him who were building him up and supporting that story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
All of that can be true. And I can accept that as also true. And I think there's this weird resistance that people have to accepting the context around a person. Maybe because you realize that if you accept the context around the person, that feeling of self-righteousness that you're ultimately grasping onto dissipates because it does inevitably dissipate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But I think that's, again, a symptom of someone dwelling on the life that they should have lived instead of accepting the life that they have. Right. And I just find that to be a waste of time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah. Yeah. I think that is a scary trap that victims can fall into is like how you then become self-destructive in your own mind as a result of someone having been destructive towards you. I think that is the deepest tragedy of hurt is how it can then become implosive. And I did not want to implode. I was scared to implode. I saw a lot of people around me in prison imploding.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so I assumed that of him and I gave him that benefit of the doubt. And as soon as I like opened that door, like, hey, you hurt me, but maybe that wasn't your intention. Maybe your intention was something else. He filled that void with his story and his message and what he wanted me to understand about himself. And I mean, one of the wildest things about this book is
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I think what's a really interesting thing for me is discovering what can come from approaching someone recognizing that. When I approached him, I approached him in a really unconventional way, right? Like I'm trying to find common ground with this person. I'm trying to, I'm deeply, genuinely curious about this person.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I am primed to feel compassion for this person because that is just the mental and intentional space that I put myself in, in approaching him. And the surprising dividends that arise from that. Because I think everyone is evolving. No one is static. Even he is on his own journeys, on his own path. And I'm not in control of his path.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But that doesn't mean that I can't be a very compelling influence of all the people in the world who could be nice to him and have that have an impact on him. Me. Me. And like recognizing like I didn't really fully comprehend that until I sat down with him and like I sort of in my mind. I realized what it looked like from my position.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, here's this person who had this overwhelming impact on my life. And to this day, like, continually, like, this story that he made up, like, took over my life and continues to take over my life. Like, this is what I'm going to live with for the rest of my life is because of him. This person who has had this outsized influence on my well-being and my personhood and my existence, this guy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I sit down across from him. and I'm nice to him, and I walk away from that encounter realizing that his well-being depends on me much more so than my well-being depends on him. And I think because deep down, He understands that there is this dynamic that, you know, whatever stories he can tell himself about what happened, he was the one who was in power and I was the one who went to prison.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And for me to be kind to him, I didn't have to do that. He had never had it happen before. It was unheard of. And as a spiritual person, he experienced it in a spiritual way. me, I came out of that experience feeling like a fucking superhero. I have never felt more powerful in my life than when I sat across from him and was kind to him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And it didn't matter what he said or what he did, because I showed up. And That was I was not expecting that to happen. That was not how I expected to feel. It surprised me. But like it had such an impact on me that I felt like I had discovered something about about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
trauma and and about healing and and about people and dynamics and in a world that is so conflicted and where the people are you know not building bridges they're blowing them up i was like i wanted to remind people of what happens when you when you take a chance and you take a stand Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Is that I talk about like I do not sugarcoat what I went through, like and especially what he did to me. Like I very like clearly set out like here's the fucked up shit he said about me in court completely without evidence, like totally made up bullshit. Like and it ruined my life. Right. Here's what it is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But you've had encounters with people. I don't think you have to have as devastating of a situation to be in a position to know that you're doing the right thing in a moment. For instance, when my husband got up in his whitey tighties and walked down the stairs to put himself between me and his family and this crazy guy...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I feel like maybe he felt that in that moment, like total clarity of purpose. And it didn't really matter what happened because he was doing the thing that had to be done in that moment. And there was no confusion there. I think that, like, when I talk about it with him today, like, to this day, he's just like, I was just not confused. I just knew exactly what I needed. I didn't even think.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
It was that flow state, even, that they talk about in, like, Tao, when, like, you and the universe are moving in the exact, in sync.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And that was my version of it. That was his version of it. And I think that all of us have the opportunity to glimpse that in our lives. And I'm just curious if you've ever felt like you were moving in sync with the universe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Because the other danger is like. I don't want to consider myself above criticism, say. I think the other flip side of that, of having confidence, is potentially having the confidence that my prosecutor had. Was he feeling in sync with the universe when he was prosecuting me? Clearly not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Acknowledge these facts and also and also here is a person who might have had like in doing so might have been coming from a place of trying to rationalize things in his own mind, which is a thing that we all do. We all do on a regular basis. We're all just sort of interpreting our reality in the way that suits us. And so I and I wrote this book from my perspective.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And that person doesn't know any better. Yeah. That's fucking dark.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
You know, my book's been out for a month or so now. And I'm also, you know, working on I don't know if you knew this. I have a Hulu show that I'm working on that's based on my life. Yeah. Monica is executive producing it. Monica Lewinsky is executive producing it. Um, and I'm really proud of it. It's, it's, um, it goes, it's coming out at the end of, uh, at the end of the summer, late summer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I translated the entire thing into Italian before it ever got published so that I could share it with him so that he would know what I was saying about him in public, what was imminently going to come out. And his response was, I have never felt more seen. That's what he told me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And, um, but one of the things that like, one of the responses that I've had to my book and to the, you know, the news that I'm telling my story in this way or in another way, and I write about this in the book is this question of, um, Do I have the right to tell my story? What? Yeah. Who's saying that? Well, people who believe that I'm not the real victim of the story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
The real victim is my roommate who was murdered. And that unless I have the blessing of Meredith's family to tell my story, that I should shut up and disappear out of respect.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Journalists certainly who have interviewed me. I get this a lot. I get this a lot. From who? From people who I feel like are suffering from something I call the single victim fallacy. This idea that you have to decide who's the real victim.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, I'm trying to have a conversation with these people about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
So it comes in different forms. So some people are very explicit and say, like, don't you think you shouldn't be doing this when the Kircher family's lawyer says that you shouldn't be doing this and that it's offensive?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah. Yeah. And then I have to sit there and, again, do like experience the rage that washes over me and then go, how do I have an effective conversation with this human being? How do I convey that my life matters, too, and that there's room in this world to acknowledge all of the truth of what happened, which included my own experience?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, that's an interesting observation because it's become quite emotional, especially on his part. I shouldn't go there too much.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, the impulse to respond is like, you don't have to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Is there ever, like, I wonder if the fear is, and maybe this is my fear because I'm always questioning myself, is, like, is there, I always want to, like, at least hear it and, like, cycle the thought through my mind so that I can test the validity of it in my mind.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Fair. Yeah. And thankfully, my husband is the one who takes the brunt of that. Oh, he shouldn't do it either. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah. What is your auditing? Like what's your self-auditing process?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I think one of the things that I worry about is that people... Only feel safe when they're either being self-righteous or when they're being cynical.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And like genuine compassion or curiosity is looked down upon as naive and a wit and a weakness. And but I feel like the only way to be truly ethical is. is to be exposed in that way. Cynicism and self-righteousness are shields. They are ways of approaching the world with a barrier. Yes, absolutely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I can't promise anyone that doing things my way, which is really trying to push back against those impulses, which I recognize as being dangerous impulses, is going to necessarily lead to good things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I guess like I think that's so I mean, thank you. And I agree. Like I've met very incredible people who have made the most of a bad situation, which ultimately that's what it comes down to. I guess my one pushback might be that I have come to realize that we are so interconnected. Like we are all influencing each other constantly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so on the one hand, yes, I'm only answerable ultimately to myself. But when I really sit down and like sit with it, Like part of the reason why I was able to approach my prosecutor with the perspective that I had was realizing that like there is a fluidity between us and all of us where we're all influencing each other.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And people in his life have now like the influences in his life, people I will never have met before. have had direct influences in my life because it's been like this fluid path, like this connectedness between me and him, me and you. Any person we talk to, any person we encounter is going to then have this ripple effect. And so on the one hand, yes, like I'm a drop.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But I'm also a drop in an ocean that has a ripple effect. And that ripple is going to interact with your ripple and all these other ripples. And so, yes, I am answerable to myself. But I also feel like I can't ignore the potential impact that my ripple might have on another person. And I've been really rewarded in the way that those ripples have been communicated to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I've had someone tell me that they didn't kill themselves because one day they heard me in an interview. And and like that they were going to kill themselves and they didn't. And like I've had someone tell me that. And like I never in my wildest dreams thought that me just deciding to like have a conversation with someone one day on a podcast would save a human being's life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But like those are those like the interconnected fluidness of all of us that like I also can't discount.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Is there like – are they thinking that they're being effective agents in the world by participating?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I'm a part of something and I'm accomplishing something. You're not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, we are primed to be psychopaths. Our algorithms have primed us to be psychopaths. And that worries me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, I don't know. I've just had really bad stuff happen to me. And I don't wish bad stuff upon other people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right, but your friends are not going to define you by what they consider the worst thing you've ever done. Of course. And they're going to recognize that you're an evolving human. And they love you. And they love you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And it's coming like their criticism is coming from a loving place instead of an attacking place. And so how do we get back to communicating with each other, not from an adversarial place, which automatically instigates defensiveness and sort of refusal to acknowledge anything. Right. To a place of like genuine openness.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
They'll go down a crazy rabbit hole. Yes. So in a nutshell, what happened?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, I guess. I'm not a Christian. Radical forgiveness. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I didn't really set out for it. People like point to that. They're like, forgiveness, forgiveness. You're doing forgiveness.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Can I ask you about comedy? Sure. Because I want to do comedy. I'm doing... I just wanna, guys, I wanna. I'm actually doing stand-up on Saturday, but on Vashon Island. What's Vashon Island? It's where I live.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Oh yeah, okay. Bainbridge Island. Our island is a little more rural than Bainbridge. It's
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I feel like we have a very supportive community. I've done it before and it's been great.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
No, I'm part of like, it's like this Saturday I'm going to be a part, I'm in a lineup of people who have like seven minutes set.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm walking up there and I'm like, yay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
This will be like the fourth or fifth time. Whitney actually was the one who first introduced me to stand-up. I love Whitney, by the way. She's the best. Can we just gush about Whitney for a second? I love it to death. And I love the fact that we both have small kids at the same time. And... I just I just love her.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so she was the one who first recognized like this girl's been through some shit. I bet she's fucking funny. And and, you know, befriended me after I got on her podcast. And then when she did the roast of Whitney Cummings for OnlyFans, I was her like special surprise guest. And I got to do a little bit of a roast of her and a little bit of myself, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, of course, the one place that I can finally get my comedic, you know, true self out there is on OnlyFans, of all things. And, you know, I get to be, you know, when I go this Saturday, I get to be the ex-con mom on the menu. And that's a Pornhub search for you. Yeah. You know, like I get to like lean in to the tragedy of it all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, that's the thing. I do have extreme anger. Like that's all part of it. And this is where like the Buddhist in me comes out where you you can have extreme anger towards a person. And at the same time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But it then goes back to that question of do people stick you into boxes or are you allowed to be more than what people expect you to be? And I've... you know, in the past, not from my my own community, but from strangers received criticism for making jokes about my experience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And again, coming from that place of how dare you joke about, you know, going to prison for a crime you didn't commit when you're not the real victim and whatever, or you're or you're a true crime figure. You're a you're a you're a Person who has been, I associate with a tragedy, therefore you have to stay in tragedy space and moving into comedic space is not allowed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And so I'm just curious what your thoughts are about that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
It's like to do it as if also as if everyone only lives in L.A. and you weren't like the only people worth talking to are going to be in L.A.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
hold them in your hand as this like tender fallible creature that is capable of violence against you but is also capable of being hurt just because someone hurt you doesn't mean that they're not capable of being hurt and I certainly don't want to be in the position of hurting someone like that's just who I am and if anything like one thing that I've communicated to him is like look
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I mean, I went to your show last night. It was super fun. Thank you. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, and I do worry about people's lack of imagination. It's like, I don't know, I've had enough taken away from me that I am not going to be limited by a lack of imagination. Absolutely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I was studying abroad when I was 20 years old in Perugia, Italy. One of my roommates was raped and murdered by a burglar who broke into our home. But I was accused of having orchestrated a murder orgy. And I was sent to prison for four years. I was sentenced to 26 years. I was put on trial for eight years. And it became this international scandal thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I don't know if you're ever going to really wrap your head around what you did to me. But if you do one day, I know that you're going to feel really, really bad. And I just want you to know that I... I don't wish suffering on you. I don't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I mean, I'm still thinking about that. I'm, I'm still like trying to figure it out. And I think that's good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Again, the thing that haunts me is when people think they're doing their best and they're not. That's what haunts me. And that happens. That is happening constantly. It's people convincing themselves that they're doing their best and they're not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But then how do you get out of that cycle of convincing yourself? Because that's where the issue of cognitive bias comes in and like reaffirming your your sense of self to yourself and your identity. Like, I'm a good guy. I can't you know, I can't do wrong or like, you know, I'm a good friend. I can't be a bad like there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
There are ways that we define ourselves that makes it impossible for ourselves to see ourselves clearly. And that freaks me out. Like, I'm always afraid of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
True. That's very true. I've definitely found myself in the position of not being helpable. There's a story I tell in the book about trusting the wrong person and wanting to believe that they were someone like me, someone who could understand me, and then I realized they were not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I wanted to ask how you slow down though, right? You're talking about slowing down and like taking stock. And the way I do it is by meditating. But I have found that a lot of people are resistant to the idea of meditating because they have certain ideas about what meditating is. And like it's shutting off your thoughts and it's like, well, you know, eventually you might be able to do that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But ultimately, it's just sitting down and noticing your thoughts that arise. But I like to say that anyone who can masturbate can meditate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And the funny things that occur to your brain when you are meditating, like I have, okay, can I tell you something that's kind of like off color? Sure. Well, maybe you know this, like since becoming a mom, like my libido,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Oh, yeah. Just because I'm constantly being like touched that like the last thing I need is for my husband to climb on me like a jungle gym. Like it's just not what's on the menu for me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I'm so tired. And like I'm just like my body is different. The chemistry is still working itself out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
The one thing that reliably makes me horny is meditating.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Isn't that wild? Huh. And, you know, we have this, like, term in meditation, like, monkey mind, right? Like, the idea being that, like, when you sit down, you really notice that your mind is going all over the place and is just, like—
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I don't think you do that your whole career and then this 20 year old bitch I think she's too cute I don't like how she's smiling yeah there was that element to it well yeah I think that and I do feel like there was some kind of pornographic nature to it like I don't know like I think that well there's a lot of men that have like a deep resentment for beautiful women
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
There's something again, one of those like weird on unintended consequences of just trying to like sit back and take stock is like rediscovering parts of yourself that have been sort of diminished or made dormant because of the stress of existence. So, another reason why they should advertise that. I don't know why they don't advertise that on meditation apps. It's like, is this just me?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I have done it because my brother-in-law is a Ren Faire guy. He's a Ren Faire performer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Archery, yes. I've done it in his backyard because he has all of the medieval weaponry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
So you're saying that Legolas is a badass is what I'm hearing. Who? Legolas from Lord of the Rings.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I don't think that's... A coincidence. And I also always feel like whenever I'm feeling really shitty psychologically, I need to go for a run. Yes. Do you find, so here's my question.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Given that that is your meditative practice, do you find that in the moment that you release the bow and that becoming one and that flow state that you have entered into in order to perfectly align yourself with the bow and the arrow, does that moment of release ever...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
ever result in some kind of unconscious processing coming into your consciousness so like some kind of a new awareness of something that you've been trying to figure out and it like is a catalyst for you figuring out what you need like that feeling of like being in sync with the universe and knowing what you need to do do you ever find yourself like in the moment that you are like
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
immediately exiting that flow state, do you feel more clarity about your life or what you need to do or that thing that you weren't thinking about, like your to-do list or your bills or that argument that you've had with somebody that you care about?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, does anything come into focus or do you find you walk away from an encounter in jujitsu, like knowing, not just feeling better emotionally, but like knowing what you need to do next?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, I guess one of the benefits that I get from meditation is feeling like when I come out of meditation, I feel like I have a clarity of purpose that I might not have had because I had monkey mind and I was distracted and I was using my bandwidth with so much. And so you just tune down what your bandwidth is like paying attention to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And then you reenter the world with a renewed sense of clarity and you're not as distracted. You're not on that treadmill of thought.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
The weirdness of being a man. I do think that I do not envy you being a man. No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Like, what the hell is that? Testosterone, I don't want to deal with that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
But I've never felt the impulse to punch a wall, you know?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Well, you have an outlet for your punching energy, but like... I don't know. What I mean is like that innate... Elevate like an elevated level of aggression that just is not like accessible to me as as a as a woman. Is that wrong? Am I like inaccurate in this? I just feel like I don't know what I would do if I wanted to just like jerk off all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And if they were in a position of not having to, then they would drop the nice act in a second.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
That I do think is a genuine thing and a genuine difference is it's easier for me to be nurturing. In the sense that no one would bat an eye if...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
i saw a kid who was like i couldn't figure out where their mom was and i were to approach them and say come here honey let me help you right as a man like do you second like i know that like my husband has told me this that like he second guesses like hanging out at you know with the kids at the at the park because someone might think that he's a pedophile oh that's crazy hanging out with his kids
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, because if you're just a guy sitting on a bench and your kids are playing, how does anyone know that you aren't just a guy? I think he's overthinking things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
You've never felt in some way that your masculinity inhibited your ability, your instinct to be nurturing and affectionate?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Aren't people sometimes beholden to doing things that they don't want to do just because they have to make bills or they have to?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
I'm just curious about like brain chemistry, because when I think about, you know, you've been very complimentary towards me in this conversation. But a part of me is wondering, am I just lucky that I have the kind of internal chemistry that I have that makes me value the things that I value? And You know, I'm just doing what I feel compelled to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And I'm curious when people feel compelled to do otherwise. And I don't know where to place responsibility for that. Do you know what I mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Yeah, and now I'm wondering if that's one of those weird silver linings to this whole experience is that my life became very, very public very early, and so I literally do have to walk around living my life as if there is potentially a documentary crew following me around.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Right. Yeah. I think the most wealthy and the most powerful do not want fame because with fame comes accountability. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And that is that developmental stage when your brain chemistry is being configured for the rest of your life. That is scary. You want to put that brain chemistry coagulation in the right configuration, in the right set of circumstances, or else you're going to be having a complex for the rest of your life that you're going to be grappling with. Because I don't know if you can undo that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
the stuff that you that gets ingrained in your brain chemistry when you're a kid like i don't know fuck it i don't know anything i don't know fuck all about brains but like it seems to me that like especially developmental when your brain hasn't configured yet that's when you get hardwired to have complexes the rest of your life that you're going to be dealing with 100 percent
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
Because, I mean, you know, you can look back. I don't even know how much of a choice that was for him. How much can you choose anything when you're six? How could you choose? So in a way, it was a thing that happened to him that he didn't really have control over.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2324 - Amanda Knox
And does he look back on that and go, would I give up that? Like, if I could get that life back, would I have a different life? I'm curious what he would say.