Murder On The Cape

A Woman Is Killed And Almost Everyone Could Be A Suspect

(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.