Amanda Knox, by Nathaniel Rich

This is a clip from the best sketch of the Amanda Knox trial I’ve read. It’s long, and it leaves some things unanswered, but it’s still very good.

When an attractive young woman from a privileged British family is murdered in Italy, you’ve got a popular crime story. When the person suspected of killing her is an attractive young woman from a privileged American family, you have tabloid gold. When the prosecutor hypothesizes that the victim was slaughtered during a satanic ritual orgy, you’ve got the crime story of a decade. When a sitting U.S. senator declares that the case “raises serious questions about the Italian justice system” and asks if “anti-Americanism” is to blame, and when 11 Italian lawmakers in Silvio Berlusconi’s coalition request a probe of the prosecutor’s office — well, at that point, you have an international crisis.

One might expect that the lead role in this blockbuster would be assigned to the victim, a placid, pretty girl from London named Meredith Kercher. The daughter of a tabloid writer and his Indian-born wife, Kercher was a serious student who didn’t take herself too seriously; she had been drawn to the Italian city of Perugia, in part, for its reputation as the City of Chocolate. She quickly made a group of British girlfriends, joining them for dinner parties, movie nights and dancing at the local discos. Kercher was beautiful, bubbly, devoted to her family, a model daughter.

And yet, less than a day after her murder, Meredith Kercher was all but forgotten. The show was stolen by an accidental ingénue named Amanda Knox, who, until she was convicted of murder and sentenced to spend the next 26 years in prison, was unaware of a number of significant facts about herself. Knox did not understand, for instance, that she was beautiful. It was new to her, her beauty — as a high school student at Seattle Prep she was heavier, had acne and was more devoted to rock climbing and backpacking than to dating. She didn’t have her first boyfriend until she was 19. “She’s a little dork who doesn’t wear matched socks,” says her best friend, Madison Paxton. “I’d never use ‘sexy’ to describe her.” Her beauty is no longer a mystery to her, however, now that she’s received hundreds of letters from male admirers all over the world.

Knox also didn’t realize that she would be judged by her behavior, her looks and her nationality. Nor did she suspect that her faith in human nature was a dangerous fantasy. She would learn other terrible lessons along the way too — the kinds of things most of us don’t like to think about. In July, while she waits for her appeal case to be settled, Knox will turn 24. It will be her fourth consecutive birthday in jail. She’s learned her lessons. Now she just wants to go home.