Outfoxed

I don’t remember what my resolution was on New Year’s Eve at the end of 2012. I would like to think that I pledged to do everything I could to guard my sobriety. I might have. But if I did, I joined millions of others who vowed to get in shape, or lose weight, or spend more time smelling the roses, and then failed.

I do remember that in early 2013 my time filling in on GMA was nearing an end. Robin had defied the odds and beaten cancer yet again with strength that left everyone in awe. As the date of her return in late February approached, my attention was increasingly taken with another huge story I had been covering for ABC News for the past five years: the murder trials in a fifteenth-century Italian courtroom of a young American named Amanda Knox. She was the college student who had been accused of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, in November 2007. It was a story that encompassed three countries and set off an international furor. The media on both sides of the Atlantic could not get enough—headlines alleging satanic rituals, sex games, and drugs appeared almost daily in those first months. There were breathless accounts that Knox, salaciously nicknamed “Foxy Knoxy,” was a beautiful, privileged, arrogant American, who instead of studying her junior year abroad, decided to party her way through it.

Leaks from the Italian prosecutor in the case fueled torrid stories of murder and sexual mayhem on the night of November 1, All Saints’ Day. Foxy Knoxy and her Italian boyfriend, the police alleged, had slashed Kercher’s throat when she refused to participate in their drug-fueled sex games. It wasn’t just the brutality of the crime or the lurid tales of what happened in the bedroom crime scene, there was also a geopolitical overlay to the story. The Iraq War, led by the United States, had already grown deeply unpopular in Europe. The “coalition of the willing” (another name for our allies) was restive and resentful of our country’s policies around the world. In Italy, Americans were often perceived as entitled, even obnoxious. And in late 2007, much of that negative perception was pinned squarely on Knox. The story, set against the backdrop of an ancient Umbrian town, could have been ripped straight from the pages of Shakespeare.

My 20/20 team and I jumped on it.

It immediately became clear as we investigated that there were problems with those early headlines. The prosecutor slowly stopped talking about satanic rituals (he told me years later he had never even said such a thing). Videotapes taken by the police themselves showed the evidence at the crime scene had been grossly mishandled. Knox wasn’t a rich American—she had worked several jobs while at school to pay for her year studying abroad. Even her scandalous nickname, “Foxy Knoxy,” turned out to be rather innocent. She had earned it years earlier on a sports field as a crafty soccer player. But what struck me, and gave me the most doubt about the case against Amanda Knox, was the utter lack of any of her DNA in the room where the murder took place. There was plenty of DNA from the victim, Meredith Kercher. And there was DNA everywhere from another young Italian man later convicted of the crime. It’s simply impossible to selectively clean your own DNA (which you can’t even see) and leave everyone else’s behind.

We were the first major news outlet to air doubts about the case against Amanda Knox, in an hour-long special. I was the first journalist to interview her shell-shocked parents, who had flown to Perugia to support her and would go on to spend their life savings paying for her defense. I was in the subterranean courtroom for Knox’s testimony and for the verdicts of not one but two of her murder trials in Italy. I remember standing up the hill from the courthouse when the first guilty verdict was announced. It was nearly midnight in Italy, close to the start of the six thirty p.m. newscast in New York. I was in front of a live camera, my image beaming via satellite to New York, waiting to do a live special report of the verdict—the story was that big. Nearly all of the reporters from all the countries covering the story thought there would be an acquittal. The evidence against Knox was too compromised. Then my cell phone buzzed. A single word came through on text: Guilty. At that moment, I heard a huge cheer go up. A large, unruly crowd had gathered outside the courthouse—the people there were clapping and shouting “murderer!” It sounded like a lynch mob. Within minutes I was on live television reporting the news, showing video of a weeping Knox being led back to prison, and the crowd yelling and jostling Knox’s mother and father as they fought to get to their car. It was surreal. Hours later, at two a.m., I interviewed Knox’s father about the verdict. He was distraught, shaking, his eyes filled with tears of anger and frustration as he protested she was innocent.

I interviewed her friends, her sisters, her defense lawyers, and her prosecutors over the five years her case took to wend its way through the Italian judicial system—convictions, appeals, retrials, and eventual acquittal.

Now Amanda Knox, home and free, was coming out with a book about her case and was about to grant her first interview. The competition was beyond intense. It would make news in this country and in Europe—big news. Each network sent a detailed, polished proposal to Knox, her lawyer, and her publisher, arguing their case.

When the president of ABC’s booking team showed our proposal to me, I was impressed and hopeful. It read, in part, “No other television anchor has been as committed to this story as Elizabeth Vargas. She has been on the story since day one, traveling to Perugia seven times with her same dedicated team of ABC producers, who all bring a level of knowledge, commitment and understanding to this story that is unmatched. Most important, over the years the Knox family has come to know and trust Elizabeth and the entire ABC News team for their unceasing passion, dedication and integrity on this story.” Oh my gosh, I thought to myself, I may actually win this one! I allowed myself to begin to believe that five years of working on this story would actually pay off. My producers and I began strategizing about how we would structure our final hour on Amanda Knox, the last of many, this one with her participation.

And then one morning in early February, as I hosted GMA for one of my last few weeks there, the end game began. At eight fifteen, while still on the air, I received an email from Eric Avram, the executive in charge of booking all of ABC’s most important interviews.

“I need to speak with you after the show,” he wrote.

“Sure,” I answered. “What about?”

“Better in person,” he said.

“No,” I wrote back. “Tell me now!” My heart raced. I knew this could not be good. I had to struggle to stay focused on anchoring the last minutes of the show.

“I am coming to the studio. Will meet you there,” he replied.

I waited in my dressing room as Eric made his way from the headquarters on Sixty-sixth Street to our set in Times Square. I already knew in my bones that he was bringing bad news, that we hadn’t gotten the booking. I wracked my brain—how did NBC beat us? Could it be CBS? What could they offer that we could not? Finally, Eric arrived. He closed the door. It was just the two of us. I was right. I had lost the booking, but not to NBC or CBS, but to my ABC colleague Diane Sawyer.

I stared at Eric, dumbfounded.

“I am so sorry, Elizabeth. I know how hard you worked on this story, but they want Diane. We tried to insist it be you, but they said it had to be Diane or they were going to another network.”

“Who? Who insisted?” I asked. I could not believe the Knox family would do this.

“It’s Amanda’s lawyer.”

“Can I talk to him? He’s never even met me. Can I persuade him? Doesn’t he know I know more about this case than anyone?”

Eric’s face was deeply sympathetic.

“He won’t meet with you,” Eric explained, apologetically.

“Call his bluff! Tell him it has to be me, I am the one who has covered this story from the very start!”

Eric shook his head. “We tried everything. It’s done. ABC has agreed it will be Diane. We can’t lose this interview to another network.”

I argued. I raged. And finally, the sting of the rejection burning so deep, I did the one thing I never allowed myself to do at work, the one thing I hate to do. I burst into tears. As word spread throughout ABC, members of my producing team came in to my office that day to commiserate or console. Diane called to say how terrible she felt about the whole thing—she hadn’t lobbied for this, not at all. She was warm, and empathic, and tried to comfort me. She too had lost interviews in past booking wars. She knew how it felt. Yet, despite Diane’s sympathy, there was no escaping the simple truth: I had been passed over for a bigger star. I had worked as hard as humanly possible, and my work had been stellar. And it still wasn’t enough.

News of the scoop hit the press, with several reporters noting it was I who had worked the story. “Years of jostling among television networks for the first on-camera interview of Amanda Knox ended Monday with ABC emerging the victor,” wrote the New York Times. “Diane Sawyer will conduct the interview… One of Ms. Sawyer’s colleagues, Elizabeth Vargas, led the coverage on ABC, which included several prime-time specials.”

I had to stop reading. I had to get out of the office.

I walked up Columbus Avenue, and numbly went into Intermix and bought a scarf, then up the block to L’Occitane and got some hand cream. I hoped it would make me feel better. It didn’t. I was devastated, plain and simple. On top of it, I was exhausted. I had been up since four a.m. to host GMA. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. HALT is the acronym. In recovery, they say that feeling any of those four things means you are in the danger zone—vulnerable to succumbing to the temptation of a drink. That February night, at six p.m., as I wandered in the cold on Columbus Avenue with my shopping bags, I was all four of those things. But I didn’t go to a meeting with other alcoholics to feel better. I didn’t call a friend. I didn’t pray to God for resilience and strength. What I did do is walk into a bar and order my first drink in six months.

I only had one glass of wine that night, and I didn’t have another for many weeks. But that slip was the start. That weakness, when I allowed a terrible day at work to lead to a terrible decision to drink, led to an eventual crumbling of my resolve. I was not ready for the bad days or the low blows that everyone in life encounters at some point.

It was just a matter of time before I had slipped back into my old ways—stopping on my way home from work for a secret glass of wine. Or two. First it was just a couple nights a week. Months later, it was every night. It was hardly enjoyable, as I think back. Picking out a table hidden in the corner. Peering anxiously around for anyone who might know me. Eyeing my watch, gauging my time, rifling through my purse for Altoids to cover the smell of chardonnay.

I managed to stop drinking a few times, for a couple of weeks here, a whole month there. But I could never make it last, and by the time summer melted into fall I was buying bottles of wine and hiding them under my bathroom sink.

So much for the romance of sipping a golden elixir from a beautiful piece of stemware while a steady amber glow settles over your world. There I was, in the harsh overhead light, standing over the sink, staring in the bathroom mirror at the miserable woman in the glass, gulping down her wine from a plastic cup.

I looked in my own eyes and knew this could not possibly continue.