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Amanda Knox thanks supporters, heads for home

Amanda Knox, left, leaves the Perugia court following the verdict overturning her conviction and acquitting her of murdering Meredith Kercher, Oct. 3, 2011. (AP)

Amanda Knox on Tuesday thanked those Italians who supported her throughout her four years of prison, a day after an appeals court cleared the young American of murdering her British room mate and freed her to return home to the United States.

Knox left her prison outside Perugia Monday night, less than two hours after the verdict was read out in a packed court acquitting her and her Italian one-time boyfriend of the brutal murder.

The Italy-US Foundation, which has championed Knox's cause, said the American was at Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome boarding a flight to London, where she will catch a connecting flight to the United States.

AP photographers and camera crew at Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome saw Knox family members in a terminal. Knox was not immediately seen, and was believed to have been escorted by police through a non-public entrance to the airport.

The freed American thanked those "who shared my suffering and helped me survive with hope," in a letter to the foundation, which seeks to promote ties between Italy and the United States.

"Those who wrote, those who defended me, those who were close, those who prayed for me," Knox wrote. "I love you, Amanda."

Timeline of the Amanda Knox case
Video: Italian court frees Amanda Knox
Complete coverage: Amanda Knox murder appeal

Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted in 2009 of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British student who shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia. Knox was convicted to 26 years, Sollecito to 25.

In a stunning reversal, the appeals court in Perugia overturned those convictions and set the two free. They had been in prison since Nov. 6, 2007, four days after Kercher's body had been found at the apartment.

The prosecutor in the case announced Tuesday morning that he would appeal the acquittal to Italy's highest court, but that process won't begin until the appeals court issues a complete explanation as to how it arrived at Monday's decision.

The 24-year-old Knox dissolved into tears as the verdict was read in a packed courtroom after 11 hours of deliberations, and needed to be propped up by her lawyers on either side. (Click player at left to see Knox's tearful appeal to court)

Two hours later Knox was in a dark limousine that took her out of the Capanne prison just outside Perugia, where she had spent the past four years, and headed to Rome.

"During the trip from Perugia to Rome Amanda was serene," said Corrado Maria Daclon, the secretary general of the Italy-US Foundation, who was with Knox in the car. "She confirmed to me that in the future she intends to come back to our country."

The prosecution's case was blown apart by a court-ordered DNA review that discredited crucial genetic evidence used to convict the two in 2009.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/04/501364/main20115168.shtml