Prosecutor describes Truro death scene

BARNSTABLE-- A prosecutor's bone-chilling description yesterday of the brutal rape and killing of Cape Cod fashion writer Christa Worthington nearly moved a juror to tears.

The face of the young female juror reddened and she wiped her eyes as Assistant District Attorney Robert Welsh described how Worthington was stomped, raped, stabbed, and left in a pool of blood in her Truro home with her 2-year-old daughter by her side.

``There were a large number of kicks and blows to her body," Welsh said in his opening statement as the trial began. ``The defendant was completely indifferent to her suffering."

Prosecutors say Worthington's trash collector, Christopher M. McCowen , 34, beat her outside her house, dragged her inside, then raped and stabbed her. If convicted of burglary, aggravated rape, and murder, McCowen could face life in prison.

But in his fiery opening statement, defense lawyer Robert A. George urged the 12-member jury to set aside any of their ``natural feelings of horror" and suggested that racial prejudice led to the charges against McCowen in the high-profile January 2002 slaying.

George said that in three years of investigating, police never mentioned that Worthington was raped. Police came to that conclusion only because McCowen is black and uneducated, George said. ``It's based on an assumption -- a false assumption -- that a Vassar-educated, 46-year-old, world-traveling, wealthy heiress couldn't possibly have had consensual sex with a black, uneducated, troubled garbage man," George told jurors.

Welsh denied any racial bias in the investigation. ``This case has nothing to do with race," the prosecutor said. ``This case has to do with a horrendous crime. The color of his skin has nothing to do with it."

Before arresting McCowen in April 2005 after matching DNA to the crime scene, George said, police focused on Worthington's former lovers. While George said he did not want to ``bash" the victim, he pointed out that Worthington's daughter, Ava, was the result of an affair she had with a married man. He also told jurors that Worthington had the DNA of three different individuals beneath her fingernails, and that a blanket found in the house after her slaying had semen from her former lover Tim Arnold , who found her body.

Investigators dismissed McCowen's statements that implicated someone else and instead tried to coerce a confession, George said. ``Christopher McCowen did not kill Christa Worthington," George said. ``The wrong person is here."

Welsh told jurors that McCowen told inconsistent stories to police, saying many times that he did not have any physical contact with Worthington. Then, after police presented him with DNA evidence, the trash collector said he had had sex with her.

Eventually, Welsh said, McCowen told police that he beat Worthington, punching her so hard he heard her head hit the gravel driveway. He told investigators that he watched as a friend stabbed her and that the two wiped her body down with a dish rag, Welsh said. When told the friend had an alibi, Welsh said, McCowen said, ``Then it's all on me."

Arnold testified yesterday that he was returning a borrowed flashlight when he found Worthington on the kitchen floor and her daughter trying to nurse from her mother's body. ``As I got closer I could see there was blood around her head," he said. ``I couldn't really make sense of what I was seeing."

Under cross examination, Arnold told jurors that Worthington was ``cruel and abusive" to him at times, and that he hired a lawyer after police questioned him at least three times, seized his computer and journals, and appeared to have more than a passing interest in him.

When asked by Welsh if he killed Worthington, Arnold answered, ``No."

Megan Tench can be reached at mtench@globe.com