The parents of Amanda Knox said they were stunned and angry that an Italian court again convicted their daughter of murder and vowed to continue to fight to clear her name.
"Amanda's upset, we were all shocked and upset, but we're all ready to fight too," said Knox's mother Edda Mellas. "Everyone in the family, everyone in the extended family are all ready to continue to fight for truth and fight for her freedom and it's not going to stop."
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Once again, Knox, 26, was found guilty of the 2007 murder of her former roommate Meredith Kercher by an Italian court, the latest twist in a case that has been at the center of an international media firestorm for more than six years.
Knox's former boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, 29, was also convicted after nearly 12 hours of deliberations by two judges and six jurors.
Knox, who remained in her hometown of Seattle for the trial, watched the verdict with her family live on television.
"I am frightened and saddened by this unjust verdict," Knox said in a statement. "Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system. ... This has gotten out of hand."
Knox's parents sat down for an interview with ABC News shortly after the verdict was announced, and said they were not expecting this outcome.
"If you look at common sense, you look at evidence, you look at the fact that Amanda is nowhere in that room, then no, I wasn't expecting this, absolutely not," said her father Curt Knox. "They got it right in the first appeals trial where they found her innocent and allowed us to bring her home. And this is totally wrong."
"Everything they've looked at now has come out strongly for Amanda and so for them to rule this way is just mind boggling, but not all that surprising," Mellas added. "They get it, they've gotten it wrong, and they continue to get it wrong."
Amanda was mostly silent as she listened to the verdict, which was being read in Italian, her mother said.
"She just said, 'guilty, 28 years,'" Mellas said. "She was more concerned about what was going to happen to Raffaelle."
Sollecito, who is still in Italy, was not immediately arrested, but officials today said they would confiscate his passport so that he could not leave the country.
Knox was first convicted of her roommate's murder in 2009 and spent four years in an Italian prison. She was freed in 2011 after an appeals court found the original evidence unreliable. Then, Italy's highest court overturned the acquittal and ordered a new trial.
Knox's parents said the ordeal has cost them everything, devastating them financially, but they are prepared to keep fighting.
For now, Knox remains in Seattle. Italian authorities can make a request for extradition, but Knox can appeal the latest verdict to Italy's supreme court.
"We will obviously fight it because it is not justified and there is no way she's going back over there," Curt Knox said.
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