DNA Nets Suspect in Writer’s Slaying

A trash collector with a long rap sheet was charged Friday with murder and rape in the stabbing death of a fashion writer whose mysterious slaying turned a spotlight on a small Cape Cod town and inspired a bestselling book.

Christopher M. McCowen pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail in the 2002 death of Christa Worthington, who was found lying in a bloody pool on the kitchen floor of her secluded home in Truro. Her 2-year-old daughter, Ava, was unhurt but smeared in the blood as she clutched the lifeless body, which was clothed only from the waist up.

The arrest marks a long-awaited break in a case that baffled authorities for more than three years. There were no witnesses, nothing appeared to be missing from the house, and authorities struggled to find a motive.

“We’re happy there’s been an arrest,” the victim’s cousin, Jan Worthington, said outside court. “It’s a sad day as well.”

McCowen was taken into custody at his Hyannis apartment late Thursday after his DNA was linked to semen recovered from Worthington’s body after the rape, prosecutors said.

McCowen collected trash in front of Worthington’s home once a week. McCowen was asked to contribute DNA along with the mail carrier and other people who were regular visitors to her home.

He emerged as a possible suspect as early as April 2002 but did not provide the DNA sample until March 2004, Dist. Atty. Michael O’Keefe said.

The delay in collecting the sample occurred because McCowen moved frequently over the two years. Then it took the state crime lab about a year to analyze the sample, a problem O’Keefe blamed on a lack of resources from the state for DNA testing.

The suspect’s DNA submission was not part of an effort launched in January in which investigators began randomly collecting DNA evidence from men in Truro, a town on the outer Cape with a year-round population of less than 2,000.

Worthington, 46, had moved in 1998 to the Cape town, where she had spent summers as a child. She became a mother, leaving behind the fashion runways of Paris and New York, where she had built a successful career as a fashion writer.