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Missing evidence found, must be examined

Susan Vaughn
| Special to Cape Cod Times

The man sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of fashion journalist Christa Worthington in Truro in 2002 is seeking a forensic examination of previously missing evidence in the nationally known case.

“I am still fighting for my freedom and my innocence,” Christopher McCowen wrote in an email to the Cape Cod Times on August 5 from his cell at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater in response to questions about his court order.

McCowen wrote that he had not stopped “fighting for the truth to come to light.”

He has been in a state prison since 2006, serving three life sentences without parole for burglary, rape and murder.

What happened to Christa Worthington?

Worthington, 46, was found dead of stab wounds on the floor of her Depot Road home by her neighbor and ex-boyfriend Tim Arnold on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2002. Her two-year-old daughter, Ava, was still alive. The coroner determined she was killed Friday night or early Saturday morning.

A lengthy investigation did not result in an arrest until more than three years after the murder. McCowen, a Hyannis resident and garbage man at Worthington's home at the time, was one of numerous male suspects questioned in connection with the murder. Police took the unusual step of asking men in the community to volunteer DNA samples. Seventy-five men agreed, including McCowen.

What does McCowen demand?

On May 22, Barnstable Superior Court Judge Mark C. Gildea Jr. approved the order McCowen requested to conduct DNA testing and a fabric analysis of a blue and white sweatshirt worn by Jeremy Frazier the night of the murder, court documents show. Gildea concluded that McCowen's request met all of the criteria for the first step of the court order.

McCowen testified that Frazier was with him in Worthington's house and was the one who stabbed Worthington with a kitchen knife.

“Anything could have happened. I know I didn't kill her,” McCowen told state police at the time of his arrest, according to facts quoted directly in the Commonwealth's response to McCowen's March motion, filed by Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert J. Galibois and Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth A. Sweeney.

Frazier had provided an alibi for the night of the murder on January 6, 2002, which was confirmed by a friend. He himself described the night differently, but admitted that he and McCowen had previously been together in a bar in Orleans.

Sweater was “lost evidence”

Frazier turned in the sweater in May 2005, but it was not found until a year and a half ago in a state police barracks, McCowen's attorney Gary Pelletier recently told the Times.

“The sweater was lost as evidence,” he said, and was found in custody of the Massachusetts State Police, not in the police crime lab, as one would expect. A request for the original evidence list triggered the search for the sweater about a year and a half ago, around February 2023, he said.

Why does McCowen want Jeremy Frazier's sweater to be tested?

Court-ordered tests also included blue and white fibers found in Worthington's vaginal area and under the fingernails of both hands.

“A DNA and/or fiber match would constitute highly exculpatory and substantial evidence,” McCowen said in his September 13, 2023, request for funding to fund the testing.

“The DNA of Christopher McCowen and known third parties, including but not limited to Jeremy Frazier,” was sent by the State Police Crime Lab separately from the other items included in the order to a Bode Technology Group facility in Lorton, Virginia. After DNA testing, fiber comparison analysis will be performed at the Microtrace Laboratory in Elgin, Illinois.

Pelletier said the court approved $5,000 to pay two forensic scientists, Eric Carita and Carl Ladd, who will oversee the DNA testing, and another $5,000 for forensic fiber analyst Jack Hietpas.

“Hietpas will analyze the results of a fiber comparison test in the laboratory to determine whether the blue and white fibers on Worthington's body match the blue and white fibers on Jeremy Frazier's sweater,” the original order said.

Fiber match could mean new process

Pelletier said a match on the fibers could lead to a new trial. He said previous tests of the fibers from Worthington's body may have been inconclusive. DNA from the sweater may not be conclusive evidence because Frazier may have washed it before turning it in, he added.

Pelletier has not received notice of the completion of the tests, and a preliminary hearing on the results scheduled for August 20 may not take place.

“Chris has vehemently maintained his innocence,” he said of his client, who is “committed to finding anything that could link the crime to another person.”

In his email to the Times, McCowen said there were certain things he could not discuss, such as the DNA and the sweater, and referred questions to his attorney. He said he could not say who might have committed the murder “because they (the state police) – as we all know – have jumped to judgment in so many areas.”

Christopher McCowen’s wife speaks

McCowen's wife, 63-year-old Leslie McCowen of Brewster, who married him in prison 10 years ago, also maintains his innocence, she told the Times in an interview this week.

“There's no way he could have done that,” she said. “I always knew he didn't do it. I think he was blamed. I think it was because he was black.”

Leslie McCowen said she had known Christopher only casually since he joined the Dunkin' Donuts in Eastham, where she worked, in 1999. She did not follow the case until after his conviction, when it was discussed on a Cape Cod website.

After she wrote to him, they got to know each other through letters, emails, phone calls and visits to the prison. She said McCowen was stabbed to death at the first prison he was in, Massachusetts Correctional Institution—Cedar Junction (MCI-Cedar Junction), formerly known as MCI-Walpole, a maximum security prison for men. At the time, a state Department of Corrections spokesperson would only confirm that a stabbing had occurred at that prison that day.

This incident was harder for him psychologically than physically, she said.

He was then transferred to the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Lancaster before being transferred to Bridgewater in 2008. McCowen is now alone in a cell, works as a cleaner at the gym, has a television and goes outside to exercise, Leslie McCowen said.

“I get angry a lot. It's unfair. It makes me angry. There's right and wrong and what they did to him was wrong,” said Leslie McCowen.

Several of McCowen's requests for a retrial were denied.

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