STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Amanda Knox Joins NXIVM Members’ Effort to Help Cult Leader Keith Raniere

She signed a petition demanding prosecutors in Raniere’s case answer questions.

Amanda Knox, famously convicted and then acquitted of the 2007 murder of her roommate in Italy, has signed a petition organized by NXIVM members that demands federal prosecutors answer questions in the case of sex-cult leader Keith Raniere. The petition, which was reportedly crafted by Raniere himself, asks Brooklyn prosecutors to address eight statements, including ones about alleged perjury, threatening witnesses, and evidence tampering. In June 2019, Raniere was convicted of a bevy of charges including racketeering, sex trafficking, and forced labor conspiracy. Knox acknowledged to the Times Union that she’d signed the petition, saying she had been “contacted by some former members of NXIVM who claim that Mr. Raniere has been wrongfully convicted, and that the story being told in the media is wrong.” “These supporters of Mr. Raniere asked me to sign a petition asking the prosecutors in the case to affirm some principles of prosecutorial conduct that any prosecutor should be able to affirm,” she said. “I signed the petition because violation of these practices would constitute prosecutorial misconduct, regardless of Mr. Raniere’s guilt or innocence.”