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In the summer months, Cape Code is bustling with residents & tourists, some areas seeing an increase in population of almost 1000% between Memorial Day & labor day, but when the sharp cold air of winter rolls in, it’s a much calmer place for people who are looking to experience the Cape’s natural beauty while getting away from it all. Many of the shops & restaurants close up for the season & those that remain open to serve the locals find their shops drastically quieter.
During the winter of 2002, the quiet Cape Cod community of Truro which sits at the top of the Cape, was shell-shocked when a former New York City fashion writer was found brutally murdered in her home. Nearly the entire male population within the town became a suspect. It was the first homicide in Truro, Massachusetts in thirty years.
Christa graduated from Vassar College in 1977 & briefly worked as a paralegal before she climbed her way through various popular magazines. She seemed to have an idyllic life, jet-setting around the world to cover the runways of New York, London & Paris for top fashion magazines, interviewing famous designers such as Yves St. Laurent when she was only 26-years-old. However, those that knew her well, were aware that Christa never felt part of the world that she wrote about in magazines. She saw the wealthy world she was covering as amusing, the fact that so many people found fashion & money so important when she knew that when it came down to it, none of that really mattered.
In 1997 Christa Worthington relocated to Truro from New York for a calmer life away from the congestion of Manhattan from the fashion & journalism world for a quieter, more simple life. She didn’t drink, she’d given up smoking years ago & her partying days were behind her. Christa had always been told that she would be unable to have a child, but at age 43, she conceived her daughter. Her family had deep roots in Truro where her prominent family owned many properties; there was even a road named Worthington Way around the corner from where she lived.
After Christa relocated to Truro, she began an on & off affair that went on for about a year with a local fisherman, a married man named Tony Jackett who also happened to have six children. Christa desperately wanted a child, but on top of being told she likely couldn’t have children, as she entered her 40s, she didn’t have a boyfriend or a husband & she wasn’t sure it would ever happen. When she realized she was pregnant with Tony’s baby, she was shocked. He kept this fact from his wife of 26 years who was unaware of the fact that her husband had fathered a child with another woman in May 1999. It was Tony’s belief that maybe Christa had set him up & lied about the fact that she was told she couldn’t have a baby. But regardless, she told Tony that she was having her baby & he could be involved or not.
After Ava was born, she became the center of her mother’s world & Christa was a devoted mother, the two always laughing & playing together. Christa had recently been venting to her friends that she felt like the social “pariah” of her family as well as among the local community of Truro. She was not in a good place with her father, a former Massachusetts DA who later moved on to practice private law, who at age 72 was in a relationship with a 29-year-old heroin addict who at some point had been in jail. Christa was convinced that her father had been “hypnotized” by this woman & her friends knew that it was a major source of her stress & urged her to try to forget it & move on to her own interests. Her father was financially supporting his girlfriend, paying for her Boston suburb apartment & her medical bills. Christa was actually tossing around the idea of moving back to the city & resuming her career. She’d also told friends that she was looking into having her father declared legally incompetent which would put her in charge of her finances.
At about 4:30 pm on Sunday, January 6, 2002, Tim Arnold, a former boyfriend & neighbor who had dated Christa for about a year, dropped by her house to return a flashlight he’d borrowed. His father lived on a property that was through the woods, near Christa’s home & Tim & his father drove over to Christa’s together. When Tim entered the home, he was shocked to see Christa lying on the floor in a hallway near the kitchen, Ava near her mother’s body. Tragically, Ava was trying to nurse from her deceased mother so Tim picked the little girl up & rushed outside. He walked back through the woods to call 911 from his own phone since he had been unable to find Christa’s. Ava was thankfully physically unharmed.
By the time Tim found Christa, he was sure she was already gone. She was naked from the waist down & appeared to be beaten & bruised as if she had gotten into an altercation. A knife was plunged through her left lung, the blade went through her body & into the kitchen floor. The front door had been broken & drag marks were visible on the dirt driveway outside as were Christa’s various personal items including socks, reading glasses & a hair clip. Christa’s car keys were located on the ground next to her car. The drag marks led from the back of the car toward the entrance of the house as if a person had been dragged across the driveway. The inside of the house was in disarray & suggestive of a struggle.
The medical examiner later testified that Christa’s cause of death was the stab wound to her chest; she had also suffered contusions to her nose & chest & abrasions to her arms & legs while hemorrhaging was found in her skull & was consistent with blunt impact. It was believed that Christa had been killed after 8 pm on Friday, January 4 when she spoke with a babysitter on the phone & before noon the following day, Saturday, January 5 when she missed her hair appointment. The Saturday & Sunday newspapers sat undisturbed at the bottom of her driveway when Christa’s body was discovered Sunday late afternoon. Trace amounts of dried blood was found under Christa’s fingernails & grass was found in her hair as well as her pubic area.
Heartbreakingly, detectives found 2-year-old Ava’s bloody handprints all over the house, including on a Disney videotape she tried to insert into the VHS & her sippy cup after she tried to feed her mother who lay unresponsive on the ground as well as on a box of Cheerios she managed to pull from the counter. Her diaper was soiled & she told a detective, “Mommy fell down.”
It didn’t take long for the news of Christa’s murder to spread throughout the small town & residents were terrified that a killer was on the loose. They wondered if it could have been someone passing through or worse, if it was a local. So few people visited the area at that time of the year, which made people suspect it very well could be someone living among them.
As years passed by, people began to wonder if Christa’s murder would go unsolved. DNA evidence was found on Christa’s body from an unknown male that was consistent with someone having had sexual relations. Those within Christa’s inner circle were immediate suspects, especially former boyfriends.
Investigators also focused on Tim Arnold, the man who found Christa’s body who just so happened to be her neighbor & former boyfriend. In addition to discovering her body, his semen was also found on a blanket that EMTs found within her house & used to cover her body. However, Tim had lived with Christa in that house for some time. Their relationship was described as contentious at times & Tim had been much more invested in the relationship than Christa.
Tim adamantly denied having anything to do with Christa’s murder. He described her as a person of contradiction who was bright, ambitious & talented. He indicated that after she had Ava, she became a homebody who wanted nothing more than to spend time with her child.
Tim was at the top of the suspect list, but Ava’s father, Tony Jackett wasn’t far behind. When Ava was born, his wife had no idea & Christa had not only demanded that he pay for child support, but by the time Ava was turning two, Christa wanted him to confess to his wife about their affair & subsequent child. Susan Jackett later indicated that she had no idea that her husband of 26 years had fathered Ava Worthington.
When Tony did come to her, he told Susan that he was in trouble & confused, she asked, “With the IRS?” This was when he told Susan that not only had he had an affair, but he had also had a child. Tony was stunned when Susan forgave him. She went on to say, It’s been too many years & he’s a nice man, you know, & people make mistakes , he’s only human. I don’t want this anger in me. I just want to make this all work.
At the time of Christa’s murder, Tony, Christa & Susan were making it work, keeping Ava’s well-being the main focus. Susan said that they would have Christa over for dinner & elaborated that the first time they did was very uncomfortable. She said that the more she got to know Christa, the more she liked her. She thought that Christa was a nice person & Ava was enchanting.
Susan told detectives that Tony was home with her at the time that Christa was murdered & when he took a lie detector test, he passed. The list of suspects continued to grow & included Tony’s son-in-law, Keith Amato, who had utilized Christa’s outdoor shower a time or two since it was near the beach.
Christa’s elderly father was even included into the investigation; he had a 29-year-old girlfriend who was a former heroin addict that Christa felt he was spending far too much money on.
It took months to process the DNA found on Christa’s body since the state’s crime lab was terribly backed up. The police utilized the FBI to profile the killer, but no one seemed to fit. Finally, one year after the murder, the results of the DNA were back from the crime lab & didn’t match either Tim Arnold or Tony Jackett or any other suspect on the investigator’s long list.
Police began to widen their circle of suspects & District Attorney O’Keefe asked for the DNA of every single man in Truro, thinking that they would eventually find their killer with this method.
After Christa’s murder, Ava was sent to live with a friend that Christa had named as guardian in her will, Amira Chase. With this move, Tony was allowed to see Ava only one afternoon each week. Tony went on to fight for custody, but lost to Amira.
Out of the blue, on April 7, 2005, the crime lab got a hit on the DNA that was found on the outside & inside of Christa’s body. The DA made an announcement: Last night at approximately 7:15 pm, detectives from the Massachusetts State Police arrested Christopher A. McCowen for the 2002 murder of Christa A Worthington.
Christopher McCowen had been Christa’s garbage man at the time of her murder. When police arrived at his rooming house in Hyannis shortly after 7 pm on April 14, 2005, they found him lying on the bed, watching cartoons while marijuana & an open bottle of painkillers sat on the nearby table. The man had been right under the investigator’s noses the entire time. He had been interviewed twice, each time denying that he even knew Christa. On top of that, he had even given his DNA sample voluntarily, more than one year earlier.
When he was brought in for questioning, he waived his right to a lawyer & maintained that he did not know Christa beyond an occasional wave. He said he had never been in Christa’s home & had never spoken with her. He admitted to having sexual relations with some of the women along his route, but that Christa had not been one of these women. He indicated that the last time he had picked up trash at Christa’s home was on the Thursday before her body was discovered & said that he hadn’t been there since his last pickup.
When detectives referred to the undeniable DNA match, they told him that they knew he was lying. He looked at the report for about a minute & said, It could have been me. This was the point that his story changed. He admitted that he had gone to Christa’s house on Friday night, January 4, 2002, two days before Tim found her deceased body on the floor near her kitchen. According to McCowen, he & his friend Jeremy Frazier had gotten extremely intoxicated in the parking lot of the Juice Bar club. He said that Frazier had driven him to Dennis so he could visit with the mother of his baby for 40-60 minutes & then they returned to the Juice Bar.
He said once there, he got “blackout drunk” & didn’t recall the details of what happened after & had no recollection of having sex with Christa, but then went on to say that he did have consensual sex with her. He said that anything could have happened but he knows he did not kill Christa.
McCowen said that Frazier had driven him to Christa’s house & accompanied him inside when they arrived. He said that he & Christa engaged in sex in the hallway by the kitchen where her body had been found, but then indicated that they may have had sex in an office or the living room. He said that everything was cool & before he left, he gave Christa his phone number.
He said that as they were getting ready to leave, Christa “flipped” when she noticed that Frazier was rummaging through her personal belongings & she began to scream at him. From here, McCowan’s version of events changed multiple times. First he claimed that when Christa confronted Frazier, Frazier began to punch her & followed her as she ran back toward the house. McCowen said that as this was happening, he was sitting inside Frazier’s car. He warned Frazier that Christa had her phone & appeared to be calling someone. Frazier ran to the house, kicked the door in & Frazier was inside the home for about ten minutes before he came back to the car.
He said that before they went inside, Frazier had struck Christa while they stood outside, she fell & violently struck her head on the gravel driveway & he & Frazier dragged her back inside. He indicated that once there, Frazier grabbed a knife from the kitchen & stabbed her in the chest. However, Frazier’s DNA was not found anywhere on Christa’s body. McCowen maintained that he had had sex with her, participated in the beating, but it was Frazier who had killed Christa. Detectives assumed from the start that the last person who had had sexual relations with Christa was the person responsible for her death.
When McCowen was asked what he would say if Frazier had been somewhere else that night, he responded, Then it’s all on me. When investigators spoke with Frazier, he said he had been with McCowen for part of the night but after they returned to the Juice Bar, he left to go to a houseparty & McCowen had followed in a separate car. After the party, he spent the night at his friend’s house & McCowen had not left the houseparty with them.
Christopher McCowen was interviewed for about six hours & declined to have it recorded, so the only record of the interview is a 20 page written report from detectives which was written from their notes about one week after the interrogation. According to the detectives, McCowen was sober & not under the influence & gave rational answers to their questions.
Within this report, McCowen came up with at least a half a dozen different versions of what happened on the night of Christa’s murder. Attorney Bob George feels that police jumped to conclusions & took advantage of McCowen’s race, class & limited capacities. He had an IQ of 76-78 which is classified as borderline impaired or delayed & the fact that he was using Percocet when he was brought in for his interview as well as marijuana, made him an easy target, according to Attorney George. Not only was he an easy target in George’s book, but he considered the confession to be false & accused the police of botching the investigation. George felt that leads weren’t properly followed & things that should have been done weren’t.
George argued that there was no evidence to suggest that Christa had been sexually assaulted, there were footprints & palm prints at the crime scene that were unidentified & unknown DNA was found under Christa’s fingernails from three individuals.
Prosecutors began the trial feeling confident that the jury would believe McCowen to be Christa’s killer & that he went to her home with the purpose of engaging in sexual relations with her & when he was denied, he assaulted her in a rage & ultimately killed her.
The case was centered around two key pieces of evidence, the DNA & the statement McCowen made. The DNA proved that he had engaged in sexual relations with Christa which he confirmed that he had on that Friday, two days before Christa was found murdered. He did not confess to her murder but did admit that he had beaten her & watched her die. McCowen had 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.
On the night of Christa’s murder, McCowen had been drinking heavily & joined friends at a local club where he was shown in a video where an onlooker recorded a “Rap” contest. He wanted the attention of a woman so after his night of drinking, McCowen set out toward Christa’s house in Truro at about 1:30 am where he killed her.
The DA believes that McCowen was alone that night & had no previous relationship with Christa, other than the fact of who she was & that she lived alone. However, McCowen’s attorney feels this is inaccurate & that Christa & McCowen very well could have been romantically involved & had a consensual sexual relationship. The defense suggests that the two engaged in consensual sex on the Thursday before her murder which would have been his day to pick up the garbage at her house & later, someone came along & killed her.
Defense Attorney George felt that because the area of Cape Cod is predominantly white, wealthy area, his client was being targeted & went on to say: If you had the same body of evidence & Johnny Whitebread was home for the holidays from college & was from an affluent family on the Cape & he was not black, the same body of evidence, he wouldn’t have been charged.
Christa’s ex-boyfriend Steve argued that race had nothing to do with his doubts & said there was no consensual relationship between Christa & McCowen, saying 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 trash man.’
Back in court, the defense argued that McCowen had been intimidated during his six hour interrogation which was something other suspects had dealt with including Tim Arnold & Keith Amato. Keith went on to say that during his interaction with investigators, Trooper Mawn slammed his hand onto the table & told him, ‘This is a murder investigation. And if we so chose we will turn your life inside out.’ George argued that the only difference was, with his client, McCowen didn’t have the wherewithal & background to know when to end the interview & request a lawyer.
George called in a witness, forensic psychologist Eric Brown who argued that with an IQ of 76, Christopher McCowen would not have been able to understand the police’s questions. However, the prosecution argued this, pointing out that McCowen had been clever enough to concoct a story when he brought his friend Jeremy Frazier into the case.
When Frazier took the stand, he insisted that he had not gone to Christa’s house on the night of her death & had nothing to do with it. Frazier did tell jurors that he’d had a few beers at the party that night & Bob George wanted the jury to believe that he could have been the one to murder Christa. McCowen & Frazier had been together that night & were shown in the video during the rap contest; Frazier was listening to music as McCowen stood nearby. Frazier did provide an alibi & was last seen at another party & went to sleep at a friend’s house after. His DNA was not found anywhere at the crime scene & it was only Christoper McCowen’s claims indicating he had been there.
George pointed out that there were fibers, hairs & DNA that was never tested that the police had found at the crime scene which had been contaminated by careless EMTs. Christopher McCowen never testified & hoped his attorney had created reasonable doubt to set him free. George felt that there were too many holes in the case to convict & during closing arguments, said, It’s based on 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.
The jury gathered to deliberate & days went by without a verdict. McCowen’s attorney Bob George felt that the fact that it was taking time meant that the evidence was 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, & if the DNA doesn’t mean anything ‘cause the defendant could have been involved in a consensual relationship with the victim, then what happened?
After six days of deliberation the jury, which included two African Americans, continued to debate the case when the judge made the decision to remove one juror from the panel, a white woman whose boyfriend was arrested in an unrelated crime. In a recorded phone call with him, she criticized the police about potential bias.
In November of 2006, two days after a new juror replaced the woman, the jury returned with its verdict & Christopher McCowen was found guilty of first-degree murder.
Hours later, before his sentencing, he addressed the court for the first time & said, This case here, is a very horrendous case. I feel sorry for the victim’s family, her daughter & her. I have never meant for this to ever take place.
McCowen maintains that he had nothing to do with Christa’s death & told the judge that he was an innocent man. Christopher McCowen was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His attorney, Bob George felt it was his belief in McCowen’s innocence which drove him in this case & will maintain that he is not guilty until the day he dies.
Bob George refuses to give up & wonders what truly happened to have that female juror removed & questioned, 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! You don’t have to be Oliver Wendell Holmes to figure out there’s something strange about that! We’ll find out what happened.
Despite his relief that he was fully cleared as a suspect & relieved at the verdict, Tony Jackett, Ava’s father, feels there was a great deal of reasonable doubt in this case.
Tim Arnold, who found Christa’s body, says that he is forever haunted by what happened.
Ava was raised by her legal guardians & was said to be doing well though she’ll never remember the moments she spent with her mother, having only been two at the time of her mother’s death. Christa’s friends made it their mission that Ava always know how much her mother truly loved her.
Soon after his conviction, the verdict was called into question when several jurors made allegations of racial bias during their deliberations which led to the judge to call the twelve jurors back to the courthouse for questioning.
The judge went on to rule against McCowen & his conviction was upheld. In 2010, the State Supreme Judicial Court agreed while McCowen continued to insist that he is an innocent man.
McCowen’s attorney, Bob George, ended up being sentenced to 3.5 years in prison after he was convicted in 2012 for helping a client launder hundreds of thousands of dollars & went on to be disbarred. Records indicate that his license to practice law was restored in May 2021.
During an interview with 20/20 in 2017, McCowen admitted that he was acquainted with Christa since her home was on his trash route & he routinely chatted with the owner’s of the homes on his route. He said that three days before Christa was murdered, she asked for help in getting rid of her Christmas tree & said that she invited him inside & one thing led to another. He said they began kissing & this led to consensual sex. Of course, McCowen’s story has changed on various occasions & started with his denial of even knowing who Christa was to the fact that he’d gone over there that Friday & beat her up while it was his friend who killed her. He said his story changed because he had been under the influence of drugs during his six-hour interview & the police confused him to the point that he didn’t know what was going on. He remains incarcerated at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater.
Tony Jackett, who is currently the Truro harbormaster & shellfish constable, maintains a relationship with Ava & she went on to graduate from college in 2022.
References:
- Jack Conway: What’s it like to live year-round on Cape Cod
- Wikipedia: IQ classification
- CBS News: Who killed Cape Cod mom Christa Worthington?
- ID Crimefeed: Garbage collector fatally stabs fashion writer in her seaside home
- Cape Cod Times: Where are they now? Key players in the Christa Worthington murder case 20 years later
- FindLaw: Commonwealth v. McCowen
- NY Mag: The single-mom murder
