Purity Marie Knight

Height: 5'8"
Weight: 110 lbs.

Purity Marie Knight (AKA Ariadne P. Knight) was born October 11, 1976, in Mountain Home, Arkansas. An academically gifted child, Purity also showed prodigious vocal talent from the age of eight. Until she attended high school Purity received voice lessons from Maddy Frye, whose past pupils include country music ingenue LeAnne Rimes, and appeared in numerous recitals.

Born into a deeply religious family, Purity spent her childhood as a devout Christian. Aside from the church choir, in which she became a soloist at the age of twelve, as a teenager Purity also volunteered to help teach Sunday School and participate in the local Christmas food drive.

Purity excelled academically at high school, especially in math and science, and in the fall of 1995 entered Reed College in Portland, Ore., on full scholarship. Despite initially planning to pursue studies in the sciences, Purity became increasingly interested in philosophy and the origins of religion, and elected to spend the summer of 1996 in a kibbutz in Israel. She was declared missing when she failed to return to Reed for registration. In January, 1997, Purity Knight entered the University of Mississippi. Her move to Oxford was covered in the national press. She never accounted for her whereabouts during the previous months.

Purity's father, Frank Knight, is deputy district attorney of Baxter County, Arkansas. Her mother, Judith Knight, is a homemaker. Purity had one sister, Valerie Vilson, whose murder in 1995 was recently solved.