See the interactive transcript with notes and links here.

Length: 47 mins

Mark Remillard: Last time, on A Killing on the Cape.

Dan Abrams: The DNA was the single most important piece of evidence in this case. Tim and Toppy and every other suspect wasn’t going to be tried. Without a match, no one was going to trial. None of the other suspects would have been charged.

Sunny Hostin: The investigation really hit a dead end. They found no evidence that any of the people they had been investigating were involved in Christa’s murder, so they turned to what many people call a forensic Hail Mary to try to get some leads.

Female: The story centers around a case of rape and murder in Massachusetts. It drew national attention because police tried to find the killer by asking every man in the small town to submit DNA.

MR: Then, after three years of searching, police finally got their break.

From ABC Radio and 20/20, I’m Mark Remillard and this is A Killing on the Cape.



Christopher McCowen was in his bed on a Thursday evening in April 2005 when state police officers, in those windbreaker jackets with the word “POLICE” on the back, came to his house and told him he’s heading down to the state police barracks on the lower Cape. He was 33 years old at the time. They gave him some shoes and a sweater. They put him in cuffs before walking him out of his house and into the back of an unmarked police car.

Bob George: I remember seeing the film of him being brought out of his house and he was just completely lost. It was almost like he was in his pajamas. He was in a pair of loose jeans and a T-shirt and he was stumbling towards the car. Now this is immediately leading up to the so called interview.

MR: That’s Christopher McCowen’s former attorney, Bob George. State police took video of Chris being led out of the house, which you can see during our 20/20 television special of this podcast on Friday, November 24.

BG: He’s been arrested for murder of the most high profile case in Cape Cod in half a century and he is marched over to the state police barracks. That’s my memory of it; I remember seeing on the news the arrest. Because it was big news at the time that they had finally arrested… Like any prosecutors office would announce that they’ve solved a cold case, because it was a cold case.

MR: It’d now been more than three years since Christa Worthington’s murder, and in that time, police had looked at Ava’s father, Tony Jackett, Christa’s ex-boyfriend, Tim Arnold, her father, Toppy Worthington, and his girlfriend, Beth Porter, but all those leads went nowhere. They even looked at the whole town of Truro, but in all that time they still hadn’t been able to make an arrest. They’d collected a lot of evidence from the crime scene — hair, fibers, blood samples and more — but the most important pieces were the saliva and semen found on Christa’s body from a single unknown male, and when investigators finally figured out it was Christopher McCowen’s DNA, he was arrested within days.

Amalia Barreda: When an arrest was made, we were stunned, especially since the person who was arrested was not anybody we had ever heard of.

MR: Amalia Barreda was a reporter for WCVB in Boston and covered Chris McCowen’s trial. Chris’ arrest was surprising not just because he had never been brought up publicly in the investigation before, but also due to the fact that he happened to be one of the few Black men in the community.

Female: When the arrest was made, I thought, “God, they’re arresting a Black garbage man, I can’t believe it.” It seemed like a cliché, it seemed like, “Good, we got somebody.”

Male: When I had heard that Chris McCowen was being charged with her murder, I was in shock. I said, “They’ve got the wrong person. This person just would not do that. He wouldn’t do that to anyone.”

Matt Salamone: When I heard that it was Chris that got arrested, I almost couldn’t even breathe.

MR: The arrest of Chris McCowen, a 33-year-old Black man, for the murder of a wealthy White woman added another layer to an already complicated national story. The development would immediately ignite controversy and leave some still questioning to this day whether Chris received a fair trial. But before we get into Chris’ trial and all the events that led up to it, let’s start at the beginning. Who is Chris McCowen?



It’s a humid day on July 7, 2017, in Woodbridge, Virginia, 30 miles south of Washington, DC.

Roy McCowen: This is Chris at his school in Frederick.

MR: This is the home of Roy McCowen, Christopher McCowen’s father. Roy McCowen has a round and friendly face set behind a pair of aviator glasses, his mustache starting to show some white hair.

RM: Us again, that’s Chris on top of the mountain.

MR: Chris was born in Oklahoma in March of 1972. His father printed newspapers for a living in Tulsa while his mother lived in Frederick, Oklahoma, about 200 miles southwest, tucked just above the Texas state line near the panhandle.

RM: Well, my sister called me and said that I needed to come home and she had this little boy that the girl said that was my son. I had been dating Chris’ mom off and on for a while, so I went home and there he was in a bassinet and he looked up at me as if he said, “Hey, Dad.” And so, from that day on, it’s been me and him.

MR: Roy McCowen would end up leaving the newspaper and joining the military not long after Chris was born and the decision brought him closer to Chris as he was stationed in an Air Force base not far from Frederick.

RM: And then my first duty station, I was 36 miles from my hometown, that’s where Chris was. For the next three and a half years, I saw Chris about four times a week. When Chris was born, he was born with epilepsy.

MR: Roy says Chris needed a lot of medical attention when he was young because he would suffer from seizures.

RM: His eyes would go over to the top of his head and he would just stiffen up and he would just look off, like he’s in space. He didn’t have grand mal seizures; he would just have a mild seizure, but he would have them, and during that period of time, he’s null and void. He didn’t speak and his eyes were up in his head and he doesn’t have any feeling or anything; he just in a state. They suspected that he had probably fallen off the bed or something when he was an infant. That’s what the doctors had concluded that he must have, but there was no damage, there was no telltale evidence that that happened, but they suspected that he had probably fallen off the bed and hit his head, so they think that’s what caused it.

MR: Roy says the constant need for medical attention and the fact that the children’s hospital where Chris would receive treatment was 120 miles away made raising Chris difficult, according to Roy, and Chris would end up going to live with his paternal grandmother.

RM: My mom has a huge house and he always had his own room and so she always… She has a garden, she always sold garden vegetables and things, so food-wise, he always had plenty of that and he always had clothes and things. So my mom, she pretty much raised him.

MR: Roy says Chris outgrew his seizures by the time he was about 13-years-old. As a boy, Roy says Chris was a big child and that he excelled in sports, particularly football, but as he went on in school, he started to fall behind. Something Roy thinks was the result of the medication he was taking for his seizures.

RM: By the time he got to 3rd or 4th grade, he started having some difficulties. Long as he know the work, they say, “Chris is great,” but the minute the work gets above him, they say he just wanted to always stop. He wanted a disruption. So I was always getting called back to the school, “Your boy has done this, your boy has done that.” I say, “Okay.”

MR: Chris would be placed into special education classes, which Roy says didn’t further his education, and Chris ended up dropping out of high school in his senior year. Chris had also started getting into some trouble by the time he was a teenager. Roy had relocated to Key West Florida by that time, but Chris was still in Oklahoma. Roy says Chris got into trouble for stealing checks from his grandmother and, one time, for staying out all night.

RM: Chris was 15. 15-year-old, you can’t just leave and not say, “I’ll spend the night somewhere else.” That’s before cellphones and calling whatever, so Chris stayed in that type of trouble, juvenile trouble. Every bit of it, juvenile trouble. He didn’t rob a bank or a jewelry store or something; he would do petty stuff.

MR: Chris would come to live with his father in Florida, but the trouble would follow, including a conviction for grand theft that landed Chris behind bars for about a year and a half between 1993 and 1994. His father seems to chalk it up to him being in the wrong place at the wrong time, however.

RM: Okay, we’re in Key West, so one of Chris’ friends stole a moped. So he stops by and pick Chris up and Chris is riding on the moped, but by Chris being 18-years-old, and the kid being 16, Chris got charged because he was the adult.

MR: Chris’ criminal record would continue to grow during the years he was in Florida, including a stolen property conviction. He left Florida in 1995 and moved to Cape Cod. Roy says Chris moved there to be closer to an ex-girlfriend of his, Pamela McGuire. Christ and Pamela met in Florida and had a daughter together. After Chris got in trouble, Pamela left Key West to move back to Cape Cod, where she was from originally. Roy says, not long after he got out of jail, Chris decided to follow her up there.

RM: Chris was in love with Pam, so Chris caught the bus and he went to the Cape to be with Pam, so that’s where he was. But he found a job with the sanitation company. That was excellent, that was ideal. They gave him a truck and so he was able to function.

MR: In the Cape, Chris made a living working as a garbage man for a company called Cape Cod Disposal.

MS: My name is Matt Salamone, I’m from the Boston area.

MR: Matt Salamone was a co-worker of Chris McCowen’s.

MS: I lived on the Cape for two and a half years year round and for about 10 years coming down for summers. I first met Chris McCowen, I remember, when I went to work my first week. I was put with somebody to train me on some of the roads and it was Chris McCowen who was my trainer. What the company does is they have scheduled routes for summer homes. The homeowner will set up an account to have trash pickup however many times a week that they deem necessary for their renters, and we go around and pick up their trash during the winter months. Basically, we did the same job, but it was not as busy of a schedule.

MR: Matt says, for two full years, he lived in an adjacent cottage to Chris that was owned by the owner of Cape Cod Disposal.

MS: Chris and I were very close. We hung out all day at work, all day after work; we became very close. He didn’t have much family on the Cape, his family was from out of state, so he became a member of my family. He called my mom, “Mom,” he would be at all our holiday dinners, he was always welcomed in our home, whether it be mine, my mother’s. When you live in a desolated area where there’s not much going on and you have to entertain yourself, living with Chris was entertainment.

MR: But being a Black man on the Cape, Matt says, made Chris stand out. Back in 2000, Barnstable County, which makes up Cape Cod, was more than 94% White. Blacks, meanwhile, made up less than 2% of the population. Even today, the Black population, still under 2%.

MS: His appearance was outside the norm for our Cape year-round residents. He was a very intimidating, big, dark-skinned man, bald, he had the look of, if you’re going to stereotype, a big, scary, Black man. That would be what Chris looked like. The thing is that’s not who Chris was and, as soon as you would talk to him, you would know that. Chris was a very fun guy to work with. His stature was not descriptive of who he was. He’s a very big, strong, man with a very sensitive, funny side to him. He was always the prankster or jokester. He had a lot of respect from all the employees and our boss, who was a pretty well liked member of the community.

Don Horton: Good morning, my name is Don Horton.

MR: Don Horton was the owner of Cape Cod Disposal. He hired Chris and gave him a place to stay.

DH: Chris must have seen that sign, “Housing available,” and that’s what excited him about getting a place to stay, but they had to work for me. I didn’t have housing for others; I just had housing for people who worked for me. I put him to work on a route with somebody else for about a week or so, so that he could learn the routes that he was going to be doing that summer, and it worked out very well. Chris was a willing person. Chris was very willing to do whatever I asked him to do. Chris was very… I think he was well liked by many of the people on his route, yes.

MR: Don and Matt both say Chris had a good rapport with the residents along his route, which included 50 Depot Road, Christa Worthington’s house. By the time Chris began working at Cape Cod Disposal, he was no longer dating Pamela, the woman he left Florida for, and instead was now involved with a woman named Kelly Tabor. Chris and Kelly began dating in 1998 and also have a daughter together, who was born in 2000. They lived with Chris in the cottage he rented from Don Horton, but this didn’t stop Chris from fooling around with other women, however.

MS: I knew many of Chris’ girlfriends. Chris just had a weakness for women who were attracted to him. Chris had a lot of woman juggling going on.

MR: Chris’ father, Roy, also says Chris was somewhat of a player.

RM: Chris is athletic and sees Chris as just a stud muffin. So he likes that, it feeds the need that he has inside of him, so Chris is just that type of man. Chris is like electricity, take the path of least resistance. And Chris would be in places where some women wouldn’t resist him, would embrace him. I like my coffee black, I like my women black. Chris likes his coffee with lots of cream and sugar, and that’s how he liked his women, and that seems to be the type. So that’s just it, it is what it is.

MR: And according to Chris, his escapades with women even included some on his route. ABC’s Chief Legal Analyst, Dan Abrams.

DA: McCowen had sexual relationships with a lot of different women, but he also says that he had a number of consensual relationships with women who were on his route when he was collecting garbage.

MS: When you’re working for the company that Chris and I worked for, you’re seeing the same people two and three times a week every week. You talk to the same people, you get to know them.

DH: Well, it’s uncommon for people on a trash route to just go ahead and have a relationship, but it’s not uncommon for people to hook up, I guess. If the urge strikes them to do something, they can. But I feel kind of tricked that he was doing it on company time and getting paid for it.

MR: Cape Cod Disposal owner, Don Horton. And one of the women that Chris says he hooked up with on his route, Christa Worthington.



Early on in the investigation into Christa’s murder, police would actually speak to Chris. On April 3, 2002, three months after the murder, Trooper Christopher Mason and Sergeant William Burke came to speak with Chris since he was Christa’s garbage man. ABC News Consultant and former FBI Profiler, Brad Garrett, says the investigation would naturally look at anyone who had access or reason to be at Christa’s house.

Brad Garrett: When you look at Christa Worthington’s homicide, it just screams of this is an intimate murder. Using that as a template, you’re gonna have to eliminate basically all boyfriends and all people who have regular contact with her. She’s gonna see the same people, she’s gonna have the same dentist, she’s gonna have the same garbage collection person, she’s gonna have the same water reading meter type of person. All of those people are going to be the same and you’re going to have to interview all of them because they probably had an interaction with her.

MR: First, Trooper Mason and Sergeant Burke spoke with Don Horton, who told them Christa had been a customer of his since 2000 and that her regular pickup day was on Thursdays, and then they spoke to Chris. According to the report, Chris says he would pick up Christa’s trash from a wooden bin near the house. They asked him if he’d ever removed anything from inside the home or the porch, Chris said no and that he didn’t know Christa. Chris also said he didn’t know anything about the murder, just what he’d seen in the news. Trooper Mason and Sergeant Burke said they might need to get his fingerprints and DNA in the future, Chris said it was no problem and that was the end of the interview.

Beth Karas: He volunteered his DNA, but they didn’t take it at that time.

MR: Beth Karas is an attorney and covered Chris’ trial for Court TV.

BK: He wasn’t fleeing, he wasn’t hiding, he’s volunteering his DNA. He didn’t act like somebody who was guilty of this.

MR: From talking with those who know Chris, such as Roy, Don, and Matt, you take away a snapshot of Chris that is similar to the picture that would eventually be painted by the defense at his trial. His dad liked to call Chris a follower, said he’s like electricity, taking the path of least resistance, that Chris is a ladies man that liked to flirt with women but never seemed to take rejection personally. They say he’s a high school dropout with low intelligence, and finally, that his checkered past doesn’t mean he’s capable of murder. In fact, his father says the opposite.

RM: And the character of the person was not this person today that we read about. The single fact of Christa’s death, the one single fact of her death, that somebody hated her so much that they stabbed a knife all the way through her body and it stuck on the floor, that’s rage. So who hated her that much? And Chris, being the lover like he is, that wasn’t the kind of hate that he had.

MS: As long as I’ve known Chris, I have never seen any violent side of him and I have seen many, many sides of Chris.

MR: Chris’ friend, Matt Salamone.

MS: We were inseparable for over two years, worked together and hung out together, I have never seen him in a fist fight with a man, I’ve never seen him raise his hands to a woman. As far as I’m concerned, Chris has no violence in him.

MR: But as police kept hitting dead ends in the investigation, they’d eventually circle back around to Chris two years later, and this time they’d come to see him in a much different light.



It was now March 2004, two years since Christa Worthington’s murder and since police first interviewed Chris, when they decided to talk to him a second time. By now, they’ve done a more extensive background check and raised some red flags. They knew about some of Chris’ past convictions, but they also saw a number of restraining orders that have been filed against him in domestic disputes. ABC’s Chief Legal Analyst, Dan Abrams.

DA: The allegations made against him over the years were disturbing, ranging from grabbing someone’s neck, strangling, pushing, scaring.

MR: The first restraining order was filed in 1998 by Pam McGuire, the woman Chris moved to Cape Cod for. In her affidavit, Pam says she was afraid of Chris because of things that had happened in the past. She claims he had pushed her against the fridge, intimidated her, thrown a remote at her, and thrown the coffee table. A year later, 1999, another ex-girlfriend, Amy, filed a restraining order against Chris claiming he shattered the window of her car. Then, there was Laurie Mayhood and her daughter, Katie. Laurie and Katie lived in Massachusetts in 1999 and Laurie tells us that the restraining order against Chris stems from a night when then 16-year-old Katie ran away from home.

Laurie Mayhood: And she was at a point in her life where she just did not want to be home. She wanted her freedom, she had friends, she wanted to be on her own.

MR: Katie had become friendly with Chris, who was 26-years-old at the time. They met at a local Dunkin’ Donuts; she worked there and he was a customer. One night, Katie ended up spending the night at Chris’ house, something that worried her mother.

LM: I found out that she was hanging out with Christopher when she ran away from home one night. I called the police department, who went searching for her, and they came back and told me that she had been picked up hitchhiking by a vehicle. I had a very long night of worry. They found her the next day in Christopher’s apartment. I was wondering what Christopher was doing with my daughter overnight in his apartment. The police advised me, when they brought Katie home the next morning from Christopher’s, to take her to Hyannis Hospital and have her examined to have, basically, a rape kit tested to see if there had been any sexual activity. When we got the results back, they were negative, so we knew that there were not any of that going on. So I went back to the police and I said, “Where do I go from here?” and he said, “You need to go get a restraining order against this guy to keep him away from your daughter.”

MR: When we went and spoke with Laurie and Katie, we expected that they would be anything but complimentary of Chris, but we were wrong. Katie says the night that she stated at Chris’ was an innocent evening.

Katie Mayhood: Actually, I’m pretty sure, that night, all we did was watch movies until about 2:00 AM and I fell asleep and got up and went back home the next morning, so…

MR: In fact, Katie says Chris was very kind to her.

KM: My first impression of Christopher was he was caring, very, very generous, very polite. Never seemed mean or rude. Yes, Christopher never once disrespected me in any way. Never once has he ever made an unwanted pass at me. Christopher, I know, was scared he was gonna get in trouble for something that he didn’t do. Even though, yes, I was there, but it was harmless. There was nothing going on, 100% gentleman.

MR: Even Katie’s mom, Laurie, now says the restraining order was a tool to keep her daughter away from Chris, but says she doesn’t think Chris is violent nor capable of murder.

LM: I needed the restraining order in order to enforce my daughter not to go back to that place. I think he left her stay there because he knew she was going to be out walking the streets and hitchhiking, and for her to stay safe, she needed to be in a safe place and his house was a safe place. He did not touch her, he did not have sex with her, he simply picked her up and took her to his house for the night and kept her off the streets overnight. When I heard that they had arrested Christopher McCowen for the murder, I point blank said, “No, he did not do this.” He was too mild-mannered, he was gentle, he was friendly, he was outgoing. There was no reason to think that this man was a murderer. I do not think that he’s a violent person.

MR: Fast forward to January 2004, two months before cops would come and see Chris again. He would have another restraining order filed against him. This time it was Kelly Tabor, Chris’ former girlfriend, the one he was with at the time of Christa’s death and the mother of one of his daughters. In her affidavit, Kelly claimed that Chris and her got into a fight one evening and that he threatened her saying, “If you say one more word, I will snap your neck.” She called the police and Chris was taken to jail. He was eventually sentenced to probation for making domestic violence related threats, but like Laurie Mayhood and her daughter, Katie, Kelly too now says she regrets getting a restraining order against Chris. She wouldn’t do a formal interview with us, but told us that she doesn’t believe Chris is violent nor capable of murder. In fact, we tried to track down all the women who had restraining orders against Chris and got a hold of Pam McGuire, who also said she regretted getting one. ABC News Consultant and former FBI Profiler Brad Garrett says restraining orders can be tricky in a murder case like this.

BG: Restraining orders, I think, when the general public look at them, go, “He did what? He struck her?” He did this, he did that. Well, that may have occurred and it may not have occurred and the reason why is that people take out restraining orders against significant others because they’re mad. They’re mad because they didn’t get child support, there’s something about the relationship that they’re just angry about, and so they use the police and the justice system to go after somebody. That’s not to suggest that people shouldn’t go and get restraining orders, I’m only suggesting that, if you’re investigating the case that’s a homicide, for example, and people have made all these allegations about physical altercations, you’ve got to figure out exactly what does that mean, and so how do you do that? You go and do two things. One, is you interview the people who filed or requested the restraining order and you talk about that, “Did you have injuries? Did you get bruised? Do you have a broken bone? Is there any documentation of that?”

MR: But Chris’ arrest history and the restraining orders didn’t look good and Brad Garrett says, for police, his history would make Chris stand out amongst the other plumbers, electricians, and other routine visitors that would have come to Christa’s home.

BG: He has all these arrests and restraining orders. It’s interesting because none of them ended up significantly playing out in court. Sometimes the charges were dropped, sometimes they were diminished, but the point being there was at least some documented evidence that he got physical with people. Not to the point that he killed them or even seriously harmed them, but that he had the capacity to at least get physically aggressive and that, obviously, piqued the police interest a little bit. If that can make him mad, why wouldn’t this other thing, potentially, happen and he ends up killing Christa?

MR: So police had to re-interview Chris. By now, he was no longer working for Cape Cod Disposal, and so it took some searching for detectives to find him. They end up speaking to him on March 18, 2004, while he was having a meeting with his probation officer. A report from a second interview says they reviewed what Chris told investigators before, and it was more of the same, that he didn’t know Christa and had only seen her around her house. He again says that he’d never been inside Christa’s home.

DA: In both cases, he basically says he hardly knew her; he just went there to collect her trash and that was it.

MR: ABC’s Chief Legal Analyst, Dan Abrams.



Police tell him that sperm had been recovered from Christa’s body, so they again ask if he’d be willing to submit a DNA sample, and just like before, Chris said he was willing, but this time police actually took a swab of Chris’ mouth. The detectives didn’t know it at the time, but they had just collected the match for their most important piece of forensic evidence.

It still wouldn’t be for another 13 months until cops would put cuffs on Chris. After collecting his DNA, the sample was among many that sat waiting for testing as the Massachusetts State Crime Lab faced a backlog. In fact, it was 10 months after police took Chris’ sample when they would hold their controversial DNA dragnet, drawing in another 150 to 200 more samples. But on April 7, 2005, three years into their investigation, Trooper Mason was told by the state crime lab that they had gotten a match for the DNA found on Christa’s body. The official lab results came in six days later and Trooper Mason and Sergeant Burke would arrest Chris McCowen the next day, April 14, 2005.

District Attorney, Michael O’Keefe, announced the arrest on the 15, making national headlines and drawing questions about the delay.

Michael O’Keefe: Good afternoon, everyone, I’m District Attorney Michael O’Keefe. We have a brief statement to make. Last night, at approximately 7:15 PM, detectives from the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit assigned to my office arrested Christopher A. McCowen, age 33, for the 2002 murder of Christa A. Worthington.

Male: From ABC News World Headquarters in New York, this is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Reporting tonight, Elizabeth Vargas.

Elizabeth Vargas: Good evening. We start tonight with a murder solved and a national debate invigorated. Today, police announced they got the killer and revealed they had the evidence to arrest him for more than a year. The problem was a massive backlog at the crime lab.

Female: …The backlog at the crime lab that you weren’t able to process this DNA and match it?

MO: We weren’t able to process it any more quickly than we did.

Female: Because there was a Backlog?

MO: Obviously, there’s a backlog, but…

MR: The arrest took place at Chris’ boarding house in Hyannis, on the southern end of the Cape, where he was living at the time. When officers came in, Chris was in bed watching television. They’d put him in cuffs and took him to the state police barracks in South Yarmouth, about twenty minutes away.

Seated in a conference room, they read Chris his Miranda rights and tell him that he could waive those rights. He agrees and decides to talk to them without a lawyer. According to Trooper Mason’s report, they also ask him for consent to record their conversation, something Chris denies. What happens next is a 6-hour interview that, along with the DNA evidence, would play a key role against him at trial.

No audio recordings or interrogation tapes of Chris’ interview exist. The roughly six hours police spent with him were instead summarized in a 27-page report written by Trooper Christopher Mason. Chris’ story, as laid out in that report, begins the same as the other times he was interviewed, that he didn’t know Christa. They ask Chris what type of person he thinks could have committed the crime. Chris says he doesn’t know, but that the guy who did it must have been, “Drunk or stupid.” Why is that? Chris says it’s because police in Florida called him a smart criminal and that, if he would have done it, he would have made sure the Christa was alone and that her kid didn’t see anything. They then tell Chris they got DNA evidence from Christa’s body, something Chris says is another thing that showed the guy who did it was stupid. Then, they hand Chris the report from the crime lab that showed a match for his DNA.

DA: The first two times that McCowen is questioned by the authorities, basically denied knowing her. But then they hand him the DNA report.

BK: Well, some of the strongest evidence against Christopher McCowen is his statement. He denies knowing her and then his semen is inside her. I mean, hello.

MR: ABC’s Chief Legal Analyst, Dan Abrams and Beth Karas, who covered Chris’ trial for Court TV.

Trooper Mason later testified about the moment he gave Chris the report at his trial.

Male: After you showed him that report, slid it across the table to him, what did he do next?

Trooper Mason: Mr. McCowen bowed his head down, looked at the report for, I would estimate, approximately one minute.

Male: And then what did he do?

TM: Mr. McCowen then stated, “It could have been me.”

Male: “It could have been me”?

TM: “It could have been me.”

MR: “It could have been me.” Startling words from the man who was denied knowing Christa twice. Mason asked him what he meant by that, and Chris says he could have had sex with her, but doesn’t remember because he was so drunk. Chris tells them that Fridays and Saturdays are his party nights and that the Friday of the weekend that Christa was killed, he was with his friend, Jeremy Frazier, at a local spot called the Juice Bar. Jeremy plays an important role in Chris’ version of events to police, so remember that name.

The Juice Bar was an underage club and, on January 4, 2002, two days before Christa’s body was found, the place held a rap contest.



There’s actually video footage from this night. It shows Chris and Jeremy at the rap show. Chris is mostly off to the side. He’s wearing a red and black sports jersey. Then there’s Jeremy wearing a blue and white Nautica sweater and a blue baseball cap. He actually participates in the rap contest. You can see some of this video on our website at abcnews.com/akillingonthecape.

At the time, Jeremy went by a few different nicknames. In the video, someone calls him Blaze at one point, but he was most well-known as Wu, in honor of Wu Tang Clan, the 90s rap group. To put this into perspective, author of Reasonable Doubt, the Fashion Writer of Cape Cod and the Trial of Chris McCowen and a consultant to this story, Peter Manso.

Peter Manso: Now this in itself is a very interesting phenomenon. You have this group of a half dozen, eight, nine White kids in Wellfleet who want nothing more than to be rappers. They want to be Black rappers, Wu Tang Clan. The Wu Tang Clan is a well-known rap group. Chris McCowen was made to order — big, sturdy, hip, Black guy, pot smoker. There were no other Black people around. He drew these guys like a magnet, he adored the attention.

MR: So Chris and Jeremy are at the Juice Bar and McCowen tells Trooper Mason that he’s already lit, that he was drinking heavily and that’s all he remembers. He says he doesn’t remember having sex with Christa and that he woke up the next morning at home. Trooper Mason keeps pressing him to try and remember more, though and, at one point, Chris says, “Honestly, I don’t know. How do you want me to remember anything?” The report then says Chris again stated that he blacked at the Juice Bar, but as Trooper Mason presses again for him to remember more, Mason writes that Chris bowed his head and said that he had, in fact, had sex with Christa. He again states he really doesn’t remember anything and denies killing her. They then tell him to go back over what happened that Friday night and now, according to the report, Chris says that he and Jeremy could have gone to Christa’s.

PM: McCowen claims that he asked Jeremy to drive him to Christa’s so he could have sex. He didn’t want to drive himself, he was afraid of getting busted for drunk driving. He was wasted.

MR: Author and consultant Peter Manso.

Throughout the 27-page report, you see Chris’ story develop step by step, two steps forward and one step back. They ask him again to go over that night. Chris says he’s at Christa’s house with Jeremy and that he’s having sex with Christa. They ask him if he argued with her at all. He says no, and that if someone tells him they’re not interested in sex, then he’s “fine with that.” They ask Chris why they went to Christa’s in the first place. Chris says it was probably his idea and that he told Jeremy he knows a woman in Truro he, Chris, can have sex with. They ask Chris where they had sex. He says in the hallway, by the kitchen, right near where Christa’s body was eventually found, but he also says, “It could have been in the living room.”

TM: His response was, “***** her; I don’t know.”

Male: Is that a direct quote, sir?

TM: Yes, it is.

MR: Chris says in the police interview that, after having sex with Christa, everything was “cool” and then he went home, but then the story turns as police ask Chris what time he got to Christa’s. He says between 1:15 and 1:45 in the morning and that everything was fine until, he says, Jeremy started rummaging through Christa’s things. Author Peter Manso.

PM: And McCowen’s account was he went up there and he and Christa got it on and Jeremy, meanwhile, was robbing Christa.

MR: Trooper Mason recounted at trial what Chris told him during the interview.

TM: Following the sex, Christa Worthington confronted Jeremy Frazier about what he was doing in her office. He and Jeremy Frazier then left the residence and that Christa Worthington followed them out.

PM: At which point, again, this is the McCowen account, Christa comes barreling out of the house and starts screaming at Frazier, “You *****, you thief. I want my stuff back,” something to that effect.

MR: According to the reports, Chris tells police that Christa ran back into the house and he could see that she had a phone to her ear, and he told Jeremy that Christa was going to call the police. He says Jeremy then went after her and kicked in the door. Chris says, when Jeremy came back out, he was sweaty and told Chris that he had beat her up. Trooper Mason and Sergeant Burke again ask Chris to go back. This time, he says Christa followed them out of the house and she was arguing with Jeremy and that Jeremy hit her twice in the face. Chris says that’s when Christa ran back in the house, but this time when Jeremy went after her, Chris says Jeremy said, “I’m just going to do her.” Chris says he waited outside and Jeremy came out after 10 minutes, turned back and kicked in the door. Chris says he thought Jeremy was going to make it look like a burglary.

Inching along, Trooper Mason and Sergeant Burke keep pushing Chris, telling him that he knows more. Chris then says that, after Jeremy hit Christa, that he hit her too. This is Sergeant Burke talking about the interview at Chris’ trial.

Sergeant Burke: …She confronted Jeremy, that Jeremy beat her, he beat her. He said, “We put the not to her.” He said, “I still can hear her hit the ground. She hit the ground hard.”

MR: According to Mason’s report, Chris tells police that Jeremy pulled a knife from the butcher block and he watched as Jeremy stabbed Christa in the hall by the kitchen. He says they left the house and, when they got in the car, Jeremy had a black shirt, in which he’d wrap the knife, a purse, and a phone. Chris says he never talked to Jeremy about what happened to those items. Author Peter Manso.

PM: That was the final version that emerged from the 6-hour interview.

MR: The whole report is a meandering tale that inches forward with more details arising each time Trooper Mason and Sergeant Burke asked Chris to go back and start from the top. Trooper Mason and Sergeant Burke ask Chris, “Why would Jeremy kill Christa?” He says it was probably because she was calling 911 on them. Remember, police found a phone on the table with just the digit 9 punched in. Was there a connection?

A little after 1:30 in the morning, on the night of Chris’ arrest, Sergeant Burke and Trooper Mason ended the interview. During the entire six hours, Chris never admitted to having killed Christa, but did say, “Yeah, I had sex with her. Yeah, I beat her ass, but it was Jeremy that stabbed her.” ABC News Consultant and former FBI Profiler, Brad Garrett.

BG: You have all of those versions, which was from, “I don’t know anything. I did have sex with her,” to being around but wasn’t involved in the homicide to, literally, sounds like being in the same room when the homicide occurred. He changes the version, but he never puts a knife in his hand.

MR: Sergeant Burke told Chris that many of the things he described matched what they believed happened at Christa’s house during her murder, but Sergeant Burke told him that he believed Chris was alone the whole time and that Jeremy had never been there. Chris says, “And it’s all on me if Jeremy can account for his time,” because, unbeknownst to Chris, police had also picked up Jeremy and interviewed him at the same time they were interviewing Chris. Making things worse for Chris, Jeremy had an alibi. Author Peter Manso.

PM: Jeremy, on the other hand, claims that he went home with his buddy, Sean Mulvey. He claims that he slept on Mulvey’s couch. Mulvey’s father was away, out of town.

MR: Sean Mulvey was a friend of Jeremy’s who was also at the Juice Bar earlier that Friday night. He can also be seen in the video of that rap contest. In fact, he takes part in it as well. According to police reports, Jeremy told investigators that he and Sean were at the Juice Bar that night and Chris was also there. Afterwards, they went to a party where there was a fight and everyone got kicked out. But instead of Chris and Jeremy leaving and then going up to Christa’s as Chris told police, Jeremy tells officers that he left with Sean Mulvey and stayed at Sean’s dad’s house. Police would interview Mulvey and the first time he told them he didn’t remember anything about that night and hardly remembers Jeremy, but when they see him a second time, a few months later, he says that he originally didn’t want to get involved, but now backs up that Jeremy was with him at his father’s house that night.

PM: Mulvey alibis Frazier. He says that Frazier went home with him to his pop’s house. His father was out of town, the two of them, supposedly, returned to the house the early hours of the morning, try to call girls. Frazier eventually went to sleep on the couch, woke up late the next morning.

MR: Jeremy has always denied going to Christa’s house. He says he has nothing to do with the murder and police believe him.



Armed with a statement that puts Chris at the scene of the murder, DNA evidence that links him to the body, and an alibi for the man Chris claims is the killer, police booked and charged Chris McCowen with the murder of Christa Worthington. And by now, you might be thinking things look really bad for Chris, but as I said back in episode one, at the beginning of this podcast, what if things aren’t really that simple?



As the defense started to push back on each piece of evidence against Chris, they’d come to raise questions about just how reliable his statement to police is.

BG: We are talking about somebody who is a low IQ, under the influence of drugs, and somebody who was trying to appease their captors.

Male: He was the type of person who could be easily misled and led down the primrose path by certain type of interrogators or certain type of questioning because he aimed to please.

PM: This interview of the man arrested for a crime that the whole nation knew about, this is in New York Times, People Magazine, USA Today, you name it, was not taped. This is a 6-hour interrogation of the number one suspect in a major crime.

MR: And what about the DNA evidence that linked Chris to Christa? What does it really show?

BK: That’s the evidence connecting McCowen to the scene. No fingerprints, no blood, having consensual sex with her, but that’s it.

MR: That’s right. Chris says he had consensual sex with Christa and his defense would present a whole new possible scenario as to how that could have happened. What if Chris hadn’t been at Christa’s at all that Friday night?

Male: Well, Christopher McCowen says that they had sex on that Thursday, on the night before the murder. That he and Christa Worthington had consensual sex and she asked him not to talk about it, not to speak about it, and he respected her wishes.

MR: That’s next time on A Killing on the Cape.



If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate it, leave a review, and tell your friends. New episodes every Wednesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Tune In, or your favorite podcast app. You can also find our other podcasts on the ABC News app or at abcnewspodcast.com, and if you like crime podcasts, check out A Murder on Orchard Street. Our friends at Nightline are investigating an unsolved murder and could use your help. I’m ABC’s Mark Remillard.

Thanks for listening.

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Read the transcripts of the other episodes in the series here.