Amanda Marie Knox (born 9 July 1987, Seattle, Washington) is an American author who was imprisoned without bail bond in Italy for 4 years during the trial and acquittal of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, her British college housemate, in Perugia, Italy. On October 3, 2011, she was cleared of murder after an appeal trial. The sentence was declared invalid in March 2013. She was sentenced to 28 years and six months in jail in late January 2014. Her murder conviction was overturned for a final appeal in March 2015. Knox wrote about her treatment by Italian authorities and her prison problems in her 2013 memoir, "Waiting to Be Heard".