After 1,427 days in prison, the 24-year-old was last week cleared over the murder of Meredith Kercher. She may be free, but can she ever be the girl she once was?

Clear your mind of everything you now know about Amanda Knox. Look at the picture opposite of a carefree child, beloved by her family and friends. Imagine her as that smiling girl, getting into the same trouble most children do. Now, put that hopeful, excited, fresh-faced youngster into an 18-foot by 13-foot cell shared by three women.

Close your eyes and imagine that cell is where she will spend 22 hours a day for the next 26 years. As Amanda Knox wrote in a poem during her 1,427 days incarcerated in that Italian jail, “Open your eyes and see that when it is said I am an angel, or I am a devil, or I am a lost girl, recognise that what is really lost is the truth!” Because the truth is – whatever you choose to believe about the circumstances of the brutal murder in Perugia of British student Meredith Kercher – a young woman went to jail nearly four years ago for a crime which an Italian jury last week decided she did not commit. Instantly, 24-year-old Amanda Knox became the most talked-about woman in the world. More than 410 journalists had credentials to be at the courthouse as the verdict of her appeal was read last Monday, the same day Knox failed to fall out of the top five trending topics on Google.

However it plays out now, hers is a life irrevocably changed. Those closest to Amanda have always strenuously defended her as an intelligent, “book smart” girl; a young woman who had only just shed her teenage acne when she moved to an Italian town previously most famous for its chocolate. This was a girl, they say, who was unaware of the newly acquired beauty that has so captivated the press. Her sister Deanna, 22, says Amanda is the “kindest person” she knows. Her father, Curt Knox, 50 – a former vice president of the department store Macy’s – insists she was always a “regular kid”. Her close friend Madison Paxton describes pre- Perugia Amanda as, “A little dork who doesn’t wear matched socks.” And John Lange, a teacher at the £6,000-a-year Seattle Preparatory School where Amanda was named an “exceptional student” at the age of 13, has said: “Amanda never did anything to hurt anyone.” She was an all-rounder who sang in the choir and excelled at sports – it was her skills on the football pitch that earned her the nickname “Foxy Knoxy”, not her prowess with the opposite sex. Will she ever be any of those things again? It is, experts agree, highly unlikely.

A Life Transformed

It was a chance encounter that would seal the fate of Amanda Knox forever. In August 2007, she travelled to Italy with her younger sister Deanna to find lodgings for a term at the University for Foreigners in Perugia. Deanna spotted a girl posting a flyer advertising a house share for four people. “I went up to her, then ran to get Amanda. She was in love with the cottage,” Deanna would later explain. Amanda moved into the white-washed house on 20 September. Six weeks and two days later her housemate Meredith Kercher was found murdered there.

Will Amanda Knox ever have the life she dreamed of?