Truro, Massachusetts, is a small town inhabited by a close-knit community of some 1,600. A quiet, idyllic place that serves very well as a refuge from the hustles of city life. But January 26, 2002 was a different day in the quiet life of this town. That day at around 4:30 p.m., Tim Arnold, 45, author of children’s books along with his father, Bob Arnold, drove next door to his ex-girlfriend’s bungalow on Depot Road to return a flashlight that he had borrowed. Tim expected Christa, 46, to be home.

On reaching, it did not take too long for him to figure out that things were not right there. Apparently, the door to the house had been broken through. When he peeped inside, he saw Christa lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor with her little two-and-a-half year old daughter, Ava, crying and clinging to her body.

When Tim entered, Ava, reached up to him, telling him that her “Mommy fell down.”

Ava, all red in her mother’s blood, was not hurt but her mom was dead.

Tim called the police.

Quite clearly, Ava’s mom had not ‘fell down’, as she believed, but had been brutally murdered. The investigation began quickly enough.

The Background

An ambitious Christa was creative and highly intelligent, and was determined to make it big in the world. Her mother, Gloria, was an able painter and her father, Christopher, a former Assistant Attorney General of Massachusetts and a prosecutor.

Christa’s family had a cottage in Truro but the family lived in Hingham. Every summer, however, they would take a trip to Truro. Christa loved the place but did not want to settle in there too soon in life, as she had a lot to do in life.

After high school, she attended Vassar College studying English. She graduated with honors in 1977. She almost immediately became an editor for Cosmopolitan in Manhattan and later landed a job at Woman’s Wear Daily (WWD).

Christa was sent to Paris at the age of 26 as a fashion reporter for sister publication W magazine. Attending many big events, from polo matches to fashion shows to formal balls thrown by European royalty she worked hard and was immersed in her work, which got her the position of acting bureau chief at W during the 1980s. She, however, didn’t stay there long and moved to London and started working as a freelance journalist for The Independent.

Later, she moved back to Manhattan and wrote celebrity profiles and fashion articles for various publications like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

Despite professional success, she craved for contentment in her personal life. She longed for children. She felt unfulfilled. She was nearing her later
30s and was still unmarried. She did not have much time to wait for her “Mr. Right”, so she tried artificial insemination. That didn’t work. She learned from doctors that she was infertile. That, of course, was devastating for a woman who wanted children as dearly as Christa did.

As though it were not enough, Christa learned that her mother was dying of cancer. She took leave and moved to Hingham to take care of her. But even that was not enough. She found that her father was having an affair with a woman nearly fifty years his junior. It was too much for her and so she decided to distance herself from the situation, and moved to her deceased grandmother’s home in Truro.

In Truro she had a relationship with a selfish constable, Tony Jackett, 51, who was married and was a father of six. For nearly two years it was an off and on thing. But then suddenly what happened in 1998 was later described by Christa as “a miracle” – she got pregnant.

When Tony was told he was concerned about her marriage, and when Christa chose to have the baby, Tony drew curtains on his relationship with her.

It was not long before Christa found Tim Arnold, who fell for her intelligence and found the fact that she could sometimes be “caustic and quick and witty”, fascinating. But it didn’t work out, for Christa found them mutually incompatible. So they remained friends.

In May 1999 Christa’s mother died of colon cancer and four days later Christa delivered. A beautiful little baby girl it was. She named her Ava Gloria S. Worthington, after her deceased mother.

She had all the reasons in the world to be happy. Her long cherished, and nearly impossible dream had been realised. She, therefore, decided not to return to Manhattan. She stayed in Truro. She had just inherited a house there and money from a trust fund, so she was financially comfortable and did not have to depend on work for a living. She could spend more time with the baby, which she was very happy doing.

Christa’s friends thought that she had truly found contentment in Truro, “staying home with her little girl and watching the seasons pass from the small windows of her wood-shingled bungalow.” But it remained the same for a couple of years only.

The Death and the Investigation

Another thing that the autopsy established was that she had had sexual intercourse before her death. Investigators, therefore, collected DNA samples from her body. Many items were also found missing from her home including a wireless Panasonic phone, ID and credit cards.

It remains unclear if Ava witnessed the murder or if she was elsewhere in the house when it happened. But certainly she was on her own for 24-36 hours. That was the duration of the time after which her body was recovered. The little two-and-a-half-year old sustained herself by suckling from her dead mother’s breasts and eating cereal, which she found in the cupboard. Little Ava did not understand death quite well. Perhaps that’s why she tried to bring her to life with a drink from her sippy cup.

There was not much in the name of evidence, so the investigators began interviewing those who knew Christa. Elizabeth Porter (the mistress of Christa’s father), Tony Jackett and Tim Arnold were the focus of investigation because they all had some or the other reason to kill Christa.

During the investigation it emerged that there were a number of people who knew Christa and could have a motive to kill her. Cape Cod District Attorney, Michael O’keefe, was quoted in Maria Flook’s book, Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod. He said that Christa was “an equal opportunity employer. She’d (expletive) the husbands of her female friends. The butcher or the banker.”

Suspects

Tony Jackett could kill Christa because the disclosure of his affair with her could destory his marriage. Tony vehemently denied the allegation saying that when Christa died his wife had already come to know about the affair and had forgiven him. Besides, he was willing to formally recognise Ava as his daughter and to provide child support. But Tony was put above board by the fact that his DNA didn’t match the one that was taken from the crime scene.

Tim was next on the suspect list, as he had once dated Christa and even lived with her briefly before she broke up. The resultant resentment could make Tim kill her. His DNA didn’t match either.

Now, it was Elizabeth Porter’s turn – the 29-year-old girlfriend of Christa’s father, who was a known heroin addict. Elizabeth was also suspected because she had been previously linked to another murder a year earlier. Despite everything, evidence was not enough against her. Besides, the evidence found at the crime scene suggested a male attacker. Elizabeth, thus, went off the suspect list.

DNA Matches

When no break through came for three years and the pressure kept mounting the investigators resorted to drastic measures collecting swab samples of as many Truro men as possible in the hope of getting a genetic match. Hundreds of men volunteered, but many, refused too, as it was not mandatory. And there was definitely force in the argument that the process was unnecessary and useless because quite clearly the murderer would not volunteer to provide his sample.

Besides, it was too taxing for the crime lab to process all DNA samples taken even from the original suspects. The exercise, therfore, made no sense at all. It was by all means a desperate measure.

The lab did not get to process the new samples, but the match was found. And it was, surprisingly, an earlier sample obtained in March 2004. It matched with the semen collected at the crime scene. The man had voluntarily provided the DNA sample. He was Christopher M. McCowen, 33, a garbage collector, who worked in Christa’s neighbourhood. The fellow had quite a lengthy criminal record replete with several restraining orders on Cape Cod involving five women. He had even served time in a Florida prison for a variety of other offenses like car theft and burglary.

The fact, however, was that three years earlier McCowen gave the sample when he was questioned by the police. But he didn’t provide a DNA sample then and tried to elude the ploice. The police, however, were finally able to obtain his DNA. But the processing took a year or so. The DNA matched.

The police arrested him on April 14, 2005, at his home in Hyannis, and charged him with first-degree murder, aggravated rape and armed assault. McCowen pleaded innocence in Orleans District Court, and was held without bail.

The case is yet to go on trial, but the family of Christa has already begun the process of suing McCowen and Cape Cod Disposal Co. for $10 million for employing McCowen despite his criminal record. The compensation, if awarded, is likely to go to little Ava, who lost her mother at such an early age.