Exonerated Amanda Knox speaks at Erie County Bar Association's Law Day Luncheon

Amanda Knox started her talk Tuesday to an Erie audience with a description of her first night in an Italian jail cell — the silent walk down the concrete hallway to the last solid steel door with a tiny window, the metal bed frame, the foam mattress, the wool blanket.

Knox, an American who spent 1,428 days jailed in Italy after her roommate Meredith Kercher was murdered there in 2007, ended her Erie talk with the thought that "everyone is more than the worst thing that ever happened to them.

"We all have strength and presence," Knox said. "At the same time, we have hurt and weakness. And if we're careful and mindful of the influence we have with others, over others, we can do incredible work to help people who we never knew even existed."

Knox, now 34 and a journalist, public speaker and author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, "Waiting to Be Heard," works to shed light on the issues of wrongful conviction, truth-seeking and public shaming, according to her website, amandaknox.com. She was the keynote speaker Tuesday at the Erie County Bar Association's Law Day Luncheon. Organizers said 551 people attended the event at the Bayfront Convention Center.

"She's a very strong woman," said Marian Collin Franco, 22, a student from the Dominican Republic who is a legal studies major at Gannon University. Franco said she learned about Knox's case in a first-year law seminar at Gannon and considered it a privilege to hear her speak first-hand about her experiences.

"I don't know if I would be able to recover from something like that," Franco said.

The murder

In a case that made international headlines, Knox, of Seattle, spent nearly four years in an Italian prison after her British roommate was killed in Perugia, Italy, where the two were studying. Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of the slaying. An appeals court cleared them but their acquittal was overturned and they were convicted again. In 2015, Italy's highest court overturned the murder convictions of both Knox and Sollecito. Rudy Hermann Guede was convicted of the murder in a separate trial.

From 2015:Amanda Knox grateful to 'have my life back' after court saga

When Knox asked who among the Erie audience members had heard about her case, nearly every hand was raised.

"But for all the international media attention this case has received over the years, you would be surprised how few people have ever heard of Rudy Guede," Knox said. "A lot of people don't even remember the name of the victim in this case, Meredith Kercher.

"The name and the face that has come to define this horrific crime is mine."

Knox said there was no evidence she committed the crime but she said police spent eight years trying to prove their "gut instinct" that she had done it.

"To do so, they had to create a monster," she said, mentioning the "Foxy Knoxy" nickname she ended up with and other negative depictions of herself.

"I had no reason to commit this crime but it didn't matter because the real me was buried under a mountain of tabloid speculation and scandal and that was the story," Knox said. "It was a story that spoke to people's fears and fantasies and it became headlines, the crime of the century for so many people."

She said she first believed in the court, in justice and in getting to the truth. Then she was sentenced to 26 years in prison.

"It wasn't the most truthful story that won," she said, "it was the most controversial."

The aftermath

Knox said she wrote her memoir "to add my single voice to the chorus of voices that were authoring my experience without my consent. And when I did so, I was called a narcissist and a liar and a psychopath."

Through it all, Knox said, she had the support of her family. She also said that the appeal system was easier in Italy than in the United States.

When it was all done, and Knox learned through the Innocence Network that there were other wrongful conviction cases out there, she realized her purpose, she told the Erie crowd.

From April:Amanda Knox, exonerated in Italian murder case, to speak at Erie Law Day event

She had started out to be a bridge across an insurmountable barrier, that of language, she said.

"I realized that I didn't have to give up that dream after all," Knox said. "That I just had to tweak it a little. That my dream had turned into being a bridge across a very different insurmountable barrier — judgment. The judgment that we have for people who are accused of crimes whether they have committed them or not.

"It led me to becoming a journalist and an activist," Knox said. "It led me to understand some very very difficult truths about the criminal justice system around the world but also here at home, things that we have learned from other places and things we are grateful we don't have to deal with here."

Madison Perseo, 20, of Erie, and Karla Jimenez, 25 of Alexandria, Virginia, are Gannon students who attended the event. They said they want to be attorneys. Jimenez said Knox's story was inspiring. Perseo said it will help her to keep her mind open.

Also at Tuesday's event, the Erie County Bar Association honored lawyers and members of the community with its annual awards. They were:

• Chancellor of the Bar Award — Erie lawyer Robert G. Dwyer. The award recognizes an Erie County Bar Association member who was nominated by his or her peers for significant contributions with respect to their practice, attitude toward the court and fellow lawyers, and participation in civic affairs and community life, according to the association.

• Pro Bono Award — Erie lawyer Robert C. LeSuer. The award honors the volunteer efforts of an Erie County Bar Association member who has assisted with the delivery of civil legal services to the poor.

• Liberty Bell Award — Lori Dolan, immediate past president of the Erie chapter of the League of Women Voters. She has also been the league's president, vice president and secretary and has worked on numerous league committees. The Liberty Bell Award recognizes a local non-lawyer for community service that has strengthened the American system of freedom under law.

• Diversity & Inclusion Community Award — Tywonn T. Taylor is the first recipient of the award. He is the director of programming for Mercyhurst University at the Booker T. Washington Center and is the founder of Careers and Dreams, an organization that supports and provides opportunities to inner-city youth.

Contact Dana Massing at dmassing@timesnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @ETNmassing.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Amanda Knox tells exoneration story after murder in Italy to Erie crowd