Murder On The
Cape
A Woman Is Killed And Almost Everyone Could Be A
Suspect
March 6, 2007 (CBS) During the winter of 2002,
the quiet Cape Cod community of Truro was
rocked, when a former New York City fashion
writer was found murdered inside her home. As
correspondent Susan Spencer reports, almost
everyone in the town became a suspect, when
police decided to take a look at the entire male
population.
|
|
Who killed Christa
Worthington?
In the wintertime, Cape
Cod can feel like the end of the world and it’s the only
world 56-year-old fishing warden Tony Jackett ever
really has known.
"It's a real challenge being out on the water, you
know…mentally and physically…really. A real independent
way of life," he says. "I feel fortunate and blessed
that I was born and raised here.
These days, he patrols the coast, but for 25 years,
Jackett fished the open ocean, as had his father and
grandfather before him. "I loved doin’ what I did…just
to have my own boat and being captain," he says.
And that, according to reporter Eric Williams, is pretty
much how everybody in the town of Truro saw him. "He’s a
great guy. Gregarious, smart, ah, you know, really a
pleasant fellow, you know, who likes the ladies, the
ladies you know!" Williams says.
In 1997, a new lady came to town – a glamorous former
fashion writer from New York named Christa Worthington.
And Tony Jackett, married, with six kids, nonetheless
went for her, hook, line and sinker. "She was someone
very different from the people that I knew," Jackett
remembers. "She was mysterious, enigmatic, somewhat of a
loner."
Worthington, a 40-year-old Vassar grad, had lived what
seemed a life in the fast lane, covering the runways of
New York, London and Paris for top fashion magazines,
scoring an interview with fashion superstar Yves St.
Laurent when she was just 26 years old.
But Steve Radlauer, who dated Christa for two years in
New York, says she never felt part of the glamorous
world she covered.
In 1997, she moved to Truro, where her prominent New
England family owned a slew of properties.
It seemed like the perfect retreat, and the perfect
place to have a child. "She had this having a baby thing
in mind, and I think she felt like this would be a good
place to do that," says Radlauer. "The complication was
that she was not married and didn’t have a boyfriend."
"I could tell that there was an attraction. You know
ultimately I ended up over her house having a cup of
tea…and one thing leads to another," Jackett remembers,
For about a year, off and on, they had an affair and for
the beautiful writer, who desperately wanted a child –
and the local fisherman who already had six, one thing
did lead to another.
Jackett says Christa's pregnancy came as a total
surprise.
It was surprise he didn’t share with his wife of 26
years, even when Christa gave birth to a daughter, Ava,
in May 1999.
Friends insist Christa had been told she couldn’t have a
baby, but Jackett always has felt she set him up. "How
do I explain this? I’m like, all of a sudden I realize
I'm, uh, in deep s---!"
In fact, Christa had gone on the Leeza show the year
before to talk about women who choose to be single
parents.
Ava became the center of Christa’s universe, says Linda
Schlecter, who babysat a few times a week. "A very
devoted mother and she would always have Ava on her lap
and they would always be playing and laughing," Linda
remembers. "Now, I'm just still in a lot of disbelief
about what’s happened. It seems so unreal."
Unreal indeed.
"I walked into the newsroom here in Cape Cod and we just
had gotten word from police that there’d been a murder,"
remembers reporter Eric Williams.
(CBS) It was the first homicide in Truro in 30 years and
it sent Williams into high gear, finding sources,
working the phones. It was Sunday, Jan. 6th, 2002.
"Surprisingly, you know, I knew the guy who found the
body. And next thing I know I'm calling him and talking
to him about it," Williams recalls.
Williams was calling Tim Arnold, another former
boyfriend of Christa's, who lived just through the woods
from her house. Arnold’s story was that he had simply
dropped by the house at 4:30 that afternoon to return a
flashlight and instead got the shock of his life.
"He sees Christa lying on the floor in a sort of a
kitchen hallway area and he sees Ava near her mother’s
body," Williams explains.
Arnold later told police little Ava was trying to nurse.
He said he’d scooped her up and ran outside. He then
called 911.
Christa was dead, lying in a hallway off the kitchen.
"She was bruised up, looked like there had been some
sort of altercation that she had been in," Williams
explains.
She was half naked, and stabbed once through the left
lung. "The blade went through the body and into the
kitchen floor beneath her body," Williams tells Spencer.
The front door was smashed – there were drag marks on
the ground outside and several personal items scattered
in the drive.
The disarray continued inside. Shocked EMTs carelessly
grabbed a blanket from the house to cover Christa’s
body. Soon, all of Truro knew what had happened.
"We got a phone call that Christa had been murdered,"
Tony Jackett remembers.
His reaction? Jackett says he felt just disbelief and
that the crime just seemed so senseless.
With all the elements of a classic mystery, sensational
reports of the murder on Cape Cod topped the news around
the country, leaving Christa’s nervous neighbors with no
reason to suspect that it would take police literally
years to solve this crime, not that they didn’t have
plenty of suspects.
"It became some sort, some kind of awful parlor game,
you know, in living rooms on the outer cape. You’d sit
around and once again go through it, trying to figure
out, could it have been Tim? Could it have been Tony?
How did it go down?" Williams remembers.
By the spring of 2005, townspeople were starting to
think police never would figure out who killed Christa
Worthington.
The killing left the townspeople of Truro edgy, nervous,
and silently wondering if the killer might be one of
them. "Who else would come down to the end of the world
in January and do this?" Williams wonders. "You think,
'It's gotta be someone who is here, 'cause no one comes
here in January.'"
The best potential lead to the murderer’s identity was
DNA found on Christa’s body.
"It’s DNA of an unknown male that’s consistent with
someone having had sexual relations and it’s that DNA we
seek to match," explains District Attorney Michael
O’Keefe. According to him, investigators first zeroed in
on her immediate circle, especially past boyfriends.
All the while waiting for the crime lab to find a DNA
match, first there was the neighbor and former boyfriend
Tim Arnold. Not only had he found the body, but his
semen would turn up on the blanket thrown over Christa;
then again, they had lived together for a time in the
house.
"Tim Arnold was one of the few men under the age of, you
know, 70 or whatever, in Truro year round," says
Christa's friend Steve Radlauer.
Radlauer says her relationship with Arnold, at times
contentious, apparently was over. "I don’t think that
she ever entertained the idea that this was going to
develop into a long term relationship, that they were
going to get married or anything like that."
But Radlauer acknowledges Arnold may have had that idea.
"From what I understand, he was more serious about that
as a long term possibility than she was."
(CBS) Arnold emphatically denied to police that he had
anything to do with the crime. Otherwise he refused to
discuss Christa Worthington. These days, Arnold
struggles with health problems, mainly affecting his
vision. He is haunted by memories of what happened five
years ago.
"I think about it a lot...I think about it just about
every day," he acknowledges.
And he sometimes writes about Christa…
While Tim Arnold may have been at the top of the suspect
list, early on, Ava’s father, Tony Jackett, wasn’t far
behind.
According to Christa’s friends, Jackett had little time
for the baby at first and eventually, Christa demanded
that he at least pay child support. She also demanded
that he tell his wife, Susan.
Susan Jackett says she didn't have a clue her husband
had fathered Ava.
"He said he was in trouble. And I said with the IRS? And
he said 'No worse.' With the police? 'No worse than
that.' And I said what could be worse than that?" she
remembers.
What was she thinking at this point? "I was sort of
frightened. I couldn’t, he was very uncomfortable. I
couldn’t imagine that it was and he said I had an affair
and there’s a child. He hesitated and he said there’s a
child, and I said 'You’re kidding,'" she recalls.
Then, to Tony’s total shock, she forgave him. "It’s been
too many years and he’s a nice man, you know, and people
make mistakes, he’s only human. I don’t want this anger
in me. I just want to make this all work," she tells
Spencer.
And by the time of the murder, the Jacketts claim, it
was more or less working — the three of them had a
relationship of sorts, with Ava at its center. Tony,
they say, had no reason to kill Christa.
"We had her over for dinner. And it was a little
uncomfortable the first time. But the more I got to know
her, I liked her. I thought she was a nice person. And
the baby was very enchanting," says Tony's wife Jackett.
Susan says Tony was home with her when Christa was
killed. Tony took a lie detector test and says he
"clearly passed."
But police refused to rule anyone out, and the suspect
list was expanding to Agatha Christie-size proportions,
at times even including Tony’s then son-in-law, Keith
Amato, who had taken an outside shower or two at
Christa’s house near the beach.
Even Christa’s elderly father was drawn into the
investigation, though his 29-year-old girlfriend – a
former heroin addict upon whom Christa thought he was
spending far too much money.
Meanwhile, the state crime lab was hopelessly backed up.
Months passed with no word on the DNA taken from
Christa’s body. The police went to the FBI for a profile
of the killer, but nobody seemed a fit.
Then finally, a year after the murder, the crime lab at
last produced results. The results were disappointing to
police, because the DNA from Christa didn’t match Tim
Arnold or Tony Jackett, or any other suspect the police
had.
Police widened their circle. The widened circle brought
in DNA from repairmen, trash men and deliverymen. With
pressure mounting, District Attorney O’Keefe took an
unprecedented step, asking for DNA from single every man
in Truro.
"Somebody killed Christa. So if we sample everybody,
we’ll find who it was," O'Keefe argues. "We’re still
taking DNA from people, dozens of people."
But reporter Eric Williams has an opinion on this move.
"These guys are throwing darts at an elephant, you know.
I mean, they've got no chance. It’s just crazy."
(CBS) In the three years police were searching for
Christa Worthington’s killer, an uneasy peace settled
over Cape Cod, as the investigation dragged on.
Only the random DNA round-up got much public attention.
"It’s just needle in a haystack kind of stuff. It did
seem to smack of some desperation," Williams remarks.
Meanwhile, whole books were being written about this
unsolved murder; investigators, under intense pressure,
still would rule no one out, including Tony Jackett.
Little Ava, his daughter with Christa, was sent to live
with a friend, Amira Chase, whom Christa had named as a
guardian in her will. Jackett was allowed to see his
daughter only one afternoon a week.
Jackett decided to fight for custody but lost to
Christa’s friend. And Tony thinks he knows why.
"Well, being a suspect definitely cost me custody, more
than anything else, custody of my daughter," he says.
Jackett was also getting used to another reality. "We
were just going to have to live with the fact that the
perception of my being a suspect is going to stay."
But then, on April 7th, investigators caught a stunning
break, when the crime lab had a hit –a match for DNA
found outside and inside Christa’s body.
"It was just a bombshell. A huge bombshell," Williams
remembers. "We were just like electrified. Couldn’t
believe they’d come up with a match."
Ssuddenly, there was a match, a suspect and an arrest,
all announced to the world by District Attorney Michael
O’Keefe, three and a half years after the crime.
"Last night at approximately 7:15 p.m. detectives from
the Massachusetts State Police arrested Christopher A.
McCowen for the 2002 murder of Christa A. Worthington,"
the DA announced.
A lot of people had no idea who McCowen was.
Christopher McCowen had been Christa Worthington’s
garbage man. Truro was astonished and relieved and it
seemed like a done deal.
Police picked up a docile McCowen at his rooming house,
lying on the bed, watching cartoons; marijuana and an
open bottle of prescription pain killers were on the
table nearby. Incredibly, he’d been right under their
noses from the start.
Interviewed twice, both times he had denied knowing
Christa Worthington. Also, he had given police his DNA -
voluntarily – more than a year earlier.
When detectives took him in for questioning, McCowen
waived his right to a lawyer. Detectives say he again
denied knowing Christa.
"And then he’s presented with a fairly strong piece of
evidence that he’s lying," O'Keefe says, referring to
the DNA evidence.
Police say that’s when his story changed. "He admits
that, yes he went there on Friday night, yes he had sex
with her and yes, he beat her. But he doesn’t want to
bring himself to admit that he killed her. So he blames
the worst part of it on someone else," O'Keefe says.
(CBS) According to McCowen, that somebody else was his
friend Jeremy Frazier, who had been with him the night
of the murder. But Frazier’s DNA wasn’t found anywhere
on Christa’s body.
"Was there an operating assumption that the last person
who’d had sex with Christa Worthington had killed her?"
Spencer asks.
"Yes," O'Keefe says, stating he still believes that's
the case.
Christopher McCowen’s interview at the police barracks
lasted about six hours and for whatever reason, he
declined to have it recorded, so the only record of this
crucial interview is a report some 20 pages long that
the detectives wrote, from their notes, about a week
later.
In it, McCowen is sometimes confused and comes up with
at least half a dozen different versions of what really
happened the night police say Christa Worthington died.
Attorney Bob George took McCowen’s case after the police
interrogation and says they jumped to conclusions from
the start, noting that their Web site listed this murder
as "solved" almost from the moment of McCowen’s arrest.
"A person of Chris McCowen’s race, class and limited
capacities was an easy target," George argues.
An especially easy target, he says, because Christopher
McCowen literally wasn’t smart enough to defend himself.
"This is a person with a 76 to a 78 IQ on his best day,
meaning on a day where he’s not using drugs and alcohol,
not under pressure," George says.
"He was using Percocet that day, he was using marijuana
that day," George says. The attorney says his client was
putty in the hands of police.
"This is a false confession," George argues. "And I
don’t accept it. I don’t know how much of it is actually
coming from Chris McCowen’s mouth or how much of it is
coming from the police investigation. I don’t’ know."
Police bungled that investigation, he charges, from the
moment they arrived at the crime scene. "There were
leads that weren’t followed, and there were things that
weren’t done," George says.
As for the DNA, the lynchpin of the prosecution’s case,
the significance of that, George says, is all in how you
look at this crime. "There was no evidence of the
indications of rape," he says.
And the police, he’s about to tell the jury, are looking
at it all wrong. "That person that killed Christa
Worthington was white! They had footprints that were
unidentified, they had palm prints that were
unidentified, and they had unknown male DNA from three
individuals under her fingernails!" George argued in
court.
Prosecutors go into Christopher McCowen’s trial
confident the jury will accept their simple theory of
Christa Worthington’s murder. “That he went to this
location for the purpose of having sex with this person,
that was denied to him, and in a rage, he raped and
killed her,” explains District Attorney Michael O’Keefe.
The case against Christa’s alleged killer, O’Keefe
concedes, depends on two vital pieces of evidence. “The
DNA and the statement together were the two major
pillars of the case,” he acknowledges.
As far as the DNA is concerned, the state’s expert says
it proves – beyond doubt – that McCowen had sex with
Christa Worthington.
As for the statement, Trooper Christopher Mason tells
the court that although McCowen didn’t actually confess,
he did admit to police that he beat Christa and watched
her die.
“Mr. McCowen stated, ‘I never meant for that lady to get
killed. It’s a nightmare after nightmare. And not a day
goes by that I don’t think of it,’” Mason testified.
In the prosecution’s scenario, McCowen was drinking
heavily that night. He joined friends at a local club,
where they were videotaped by an onlooker, while taking
part in a “Rap” contest.
(CBS) “This person, wanted the company of a woman, after
partying and drinking all night,” O’Keefe argues. “So,
O’Keefe continues, at around 1:30 a.m., McCowan drove to
Christa’s house in Truro, where he killed her,” the DA
argued.
The district attorney believes McCowen was alone and
didn’t have a prior relationship with Christa. “Other
than his familiarity with who she was, where she lived
and the fact she lived alone,” he tells Spencer.
That is where McCowan’s attorney, Bob George, insists
prosecutors have it all wrong. “Now when they found the
DNA, for 39 months you will hear they were looking to
speak to Christa’s last lover,” George said in court.
George wants to convince the jury there is reasonable
doubt about everything in this case. For starters, he
claims, his client and Christa may have been involved.
“Chris McCowan could have reasonably had a consensual
sexual relationship with Christa Worthington and anybody
who doesn’t believe it is someone who just can’t accept
it,” George told jurors.
And that’s the defense’s explanation for the damning DNA
evidence: that Christa Worthington voluntarily had sex
with McCowan, probably that Thursday, his day for
picking up the trash, and that later, someone else came
along and killed her.
But George says, getting the jury to believe that could
be a problem, because his client is being tried in lily
white Cape Cod. “If you had the same body of evidence
and Johnny Whitebread was home for the holidays from
college and was from an affluent family on the Cape and
he was not black, the same body of evidence, he wouldn’t
have been charged,” George argues.
But miles away, in New York, Christa Worthington’s
former boyfriend Steve Radlauer says race has nothing at
all to do with his doubts. “Let’s hear about the
consensual relationship. How long had that been going
on? I saw Christa two weeks before she was murdered
roughly. It wasn’t going on then, cause we would have
heard about it. That would have been her top story, top
of the Christa news would have been ‘I’m having an
affair with my local trashman,’” he says.
Back in court, the defense also must deal with its other
big problem – that statement. So police intimidated him,
George argues, in a six-hour interrogation, much as
they’d done with other suspects, like Tim Arnold.
Another one time suspect, Keith Amato, described a
similar experience. “Trooper Mawn slammed his hand down
on the table and said, ‘This is a murder investigation.
And if we so chose we will turn your life inside out,’”
Amato testified.
“They did exactly the same thing to them that they did
to McCowen, except they were smart enough and they had
the wherewithal and the background to know when to say
stop, cut it out, I’m not doing this anymore, I want a
lawyer,” George says.
George’s witness, forensic psychologist Eric Brown,
claims that with an IQ of about 76, Christopher McCowen
simply couldn’t understand the police’s questions.
But the prosecution says that’s rubbish. McCowen seemed
smart enough, when Brown gave him an intelligence test,
linking “relativity” with Einstein, labeling Ghandi as
the “spiritual leader of India.”
And he was clever enough, the state argues, to concoct a
story blaming someone else, his friend Jeremy Frazier,
who appeared uncomfortable the moment he took the stand.
On the stand, Frazier insisted he didn’t drive to
Christa’s house with McCowen and that he had nothing to
do with her death.
But Bob George wants the jury to believe Frazier could
have. Frazier told jurors he did have a few beers at the
party.
Certainly Frazier and McCowan were together that night –
that videotaped rap contest shows Frazier at the mic,
with McCowen nearby. But Frazier supplied an alibi – he
was later seen at another party, then slept at a
friend’s house. And his DNA doesn’t show up anywhere at
the crime scene.
“He was a convenient patsy for the defendant to blame,”
D.A. O’Keefe argues, saying Frazier had nothing to do
with the murder.
Bob George also argues that police bungled the whole
investigation. There were fibers, hairs and DNA that
never made it to a lab, and a crime scene contaminated
by careless EMTs.
Christopher McCowen never testifies, betting that his
attorney has created enough doubt to set him free.
“I just think it’s a case about reasonable doubt. The
case has too many holes in it,” George says. During
closing arguments, he said, “It's based on an assumption
- a false assumption - that a Vassar-educated, 46-year
old world-traveling wealthy heiress could not possibly
have had consensual sex with a black, uneducated,
troubled, garbage-man."
(CBS) While the jury in the Christa Worthington murder
trial deliberated, the case was still being tried in the
court of public opinion. And everyone in town’s had an
opinion. "I think the preponderance of the evidence
indicates that he’s guilty," one person said. "He
deserves every bit of reasonable doubt if it’s there,"
another said.
Days went by and the clock ticked on without a verdict.
Christopher McCowen’s lawyer Bob George is taking an
optimistic view, insisting that time, and the evidence,
are on his side. "If you can’t trust what you find at
the crime scene because the scene has been corrupted, if
you can’t trust the statement because it’s unreliable,
and if the DNA doesn’t mean anything 'cause the
defendant could have been involved in a consensual
relationship with the victim, then what happened?"
For five agonizing days, the jury, including two African
Americans debated that very question.
Then, on day six, there was a shocker, when the judge
announced he was throwing one juror off the panel – a
white woman whose boyfriend was arrested in an unrelated
crime. In a phone call with him, she was taped
criticizing the police and there’s concern about bias.
Two days after a new juror was seated, the logjam was
broken and the jury rendered its verdict.
Christopher McCowen was found guilty of first degree
murder.
"He was was devastated by the verdict. Anyone with eyes
could see that he was terribly hurt by what happened,"
says his attorney, Bob George.
Hours later, before he was sentenced, he addressed the
court for the first time. "This case here, is a very
horrendous case. I feel sorry for the victim’s family,
her daughter, and her. I have never meant for this to
ever take place," he said.
But he still claims he had nothing to do with Christa
Worthington’s death. "All I can say is that I am an
innocent man in this case…and that’s all I got to say,"
he told jurors.
But the court didn't buy it and sentenced McCowen to
life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
"Did I want a not guilty? Of course I wanted a not
guilty…you know, my belief in McCowan’s innocence is
what drove me. I believed he was innocent and still
believe he’s innocent and will believe he’s not guilty
until the day I die," says his attorney.
Even after the verdict, Bob George refuses to give up.
He’s a little suspicious about what really happened to
get that juror removed. "You’ve got a juror receiving
phone calls from her cell phone from someone who’s
incarcerated in a deliberating deadlocked jury, in a
major murder case, from the jail!" George says. "You
don’t have to be Oliver Wendell Holmes to figure out
there’s something strange about that! We’ll find out
what happened.
Eric Williams, who has covered the case from day one,
says while replacing the juror confused things, in the
end he’s confident in the jury’s decision. "There was
enough evidence, it seemed, to push them, to unanimously
agree. And for most Cape Codders, that’s good enough,"
he says.
Tony Jackett, Ava's father, says this case has changed
his life dramatically. "Kind of like being in a dark
tunnel and wondering if you’ll ever see the light
again."
Now finally cleared as a suspect in Christa’s murder,
Tony Jackett is relieved at the verdict, although
remarkably, he isn’t sure the jury got it right.
"I felt there was reasonable doubt all over the place,"
he tells Spencer.
Tim Arnold is happy it’s finally over but to this day,
he is haunted by what happened. "Sometimes the weight of
events forces you to look back. Whether you want to or
not. It’s just something that’s always there," he says.
Ava, seven years old today, lives still with her legal
guardians and by all accounts is doing well.
Ava never will remember those happy times, but Christa’s
friends are determined that one day she will know how
much her mother loved her.
"How would you want to tell her about the past?" Spencer
asks Jackett.
"A little bit at a time," he says.
"Ava won’t have her. That’s the enduring tragedy of the
whole thing," Arnold adds.
|