Trial by Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case Read Free Page A

girl, Amanda Knox.”
    For this piece, I interviewed as many of the dedicated anti-Amanda bloggers as I could get to correspond with me. I asked them what in particular had drawn them to the case. While I received staggeringly long replies, emails running to many thousands of words, not one was able to articulate the source of his or her passion, beyond general statements about victim’s rights, wanting to see justice done, or seeking to protect our children from murderers. Skeptical Bystander told me she was originally drawn to the case because she saw a photo of Amanda Knox, mistook it for the victim, and thought, “gee, she looks more like a killer than a victim.” Their level of self-awareness seemed in inverse proportion to their level of outrage.
    The online furor against Amanda spilled over into the real world, dramatically confirmed by what happened to Steve Moore, a much-decorated former career agent with the FBI. Becoming a special agent at 25, Moore had served as a counterterrorist specialist, certified sniper, and helicopter pilot. He participated in covert operations against the Aryan Nations and other white supremacist groups, and he ran the FBI unit responsible for investigating acts of terrorism against the United States in Asia and Pakistan. He retired from the FBI in 2008 and took a job as deputy director of security for Pepperdine University, in Malibu, California. A handsome, rumpled man, he was known for being funny, self-deprecating, blunt-talking, and extremely stubborn.
    After retiring, he was bored. In late November 2009, his wife, Michelle, was watching a CBS News report about Amanda Knox and asked him to come over and take a look — that it seemed an innocent American girl was being railroaded in Italy for a murder she didn’t commit.
    “I dismissed it,” Moore told me. “I told her that those people are invariably guilty.”
    Michelle persisted. “Show me where this report’s wrong.”
    Steve went online and started looking at the case. “Right away,” he said, “I found serious, damning problems with each major piece of evidence. … The further I dug, the more it became obvious to me that it was absolutely a fabrication. Later, when I finally got hold of the crime scene tapes, I realized it wasn’t an accident: It was intentional. This was an intentional frame.”
    At first, Moore did nothing. Amanda and Raffaele’s trial was almost over and the verdict would be announced in a few weeks. He was sure they would be acquitted. “In the U.S.,” he said, “you don’t get evidence into court unless it’s totally unimpeachable. I thought Italy must be like the U.S. There was no evidence again Amanda.”
    On December 5, 2009, they were convicted of murder. “I had to go home from work I was so shocked,” he said. “My ears were ringing. I realized I couldn’t sit idly by.” As a former FBI agent, he was in a position, he hoped, to do something. He went to the administration of Pepperdine and received verbal and written permission to advocate on Amanda’s behalf.
    Moore delved into the case, researching it in depth. When he was ready to go public, he made a splash. On September 2, 2010, he appeared on three shows on the same day — The Today show with Ann Curry, Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos, and the CBS Early Show with Harry Smith. He told Stephanopoulos that the evidence against Amanda was “ridiculous,” Italian forensic techniques “horrible,” and her interrogation “Third World.” He said, “I am as certain of her innocence as I am of anything in the world.”
    Moore was devastatingly effective. The three main anti-Amanda websites went incandescent.
    “I’m used to people not liking me,” Moore said. “I’ve had murderers threaten me. The Aryan Nations posted on their website that I was on their list, that I was an enemy to my race. I went up against Al Qaeda in Pakistan. But this was beyond belief. I’d never experienced anything like it.