Cape Cod Murder

"This is about a little girl losing her mother in the most heinous way imaginable," Christa's cousin Mary Worthington told the court after the verdict against killer Christopher McCowen.

Mary Worthington she read two victim impact statements - one from the family and one from the now-7-year-old child's guardian.

Christa Worthington, a former New Yorker, was found lying half-naked on the floor of her Truro cottage on Cape Cod on Jan. 6, 2002, a day after she was fatally stabbed. Her 2-year-old daughter, Ava, was found lying next to her, smeared in her mother's blood and trying to nurse.

Ava "endured more than a day and a half that was so traumatic and so horrific that to say Ava was not brutally victimized would be an understatement," Mary Worthington said, reading an account from the guardian who said she has emerged from that horror to be a "very bright, confident and engaging child."

"Christa was robbed of the privilege and the right of raising Ava," she said.

The case is also about the loss of a "loving and vibrant" woman who "had the best belly laugh in the world," Mary Worthington said. "People ask about closure, but there can never be closure because Christa can never come back to us."

McCowen, 34, walked into the courtroom with tears in his eyes and then shook his head from side to side as the seven-woman, five-man jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

"Your honor, all I can say is I'm an innocent man in this case," he said hours later. Judge Gary Nickerson then imposed the mandatory sentence of life in prison with no parole for the murder and concurrent life sentences for rape and burglary.

McCowen was arrested in 2005 after his DNA was linked to semen found in Worthington's body.

The trash collector told cops he had consensual sex with her and beat her - but that it was a friend accompanying him who plunged the knife into her chest.

The friend was never charged and jurors were told they could find McCowen guilty of murder even if they believed his account.

The complicated case left the jury deadlocked Monday after five days of deliberating.

On Tuesday, the jury began looking at the evidence from scratch when the judge booted a juror who told her jailed boyfriend in recorded phone calls that cops were "dumb." She was replaced with an alternate juror.

Yesterday's verdict stunned some observers who speculated whether the ousted juror might have been the sole holdout.

Peter Manso, who is writing a book about the case, wondered if the entire verdict hinged on the removal of that juror, saying there was "plenty of reasonable doubt."

Defense lawyer Robert George, who is filing an automatic appeal, hinted at possible misconduct in the timing of the juror being dismissed from a deadlocked panel and a verdict being reached just two days later. "A lot has happened between taking that juror out of the deadlock and to where we are today," he said. See the original in the NY Post here.
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CHRISTA TWIST
JUROR BOOTED FOR 'DUMB COPS' CRACK

By Jack Coleman for New York Post
BARNSTABLE, Mass - A judge yesterday kicked a woman off the jury in the Christa Worthington rape-and-murder trial after she was recorded in phone calls telling her jailed boyfriend that cops are "dumb"... Read this Post story here.
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