CapeCodToday Blog Chowder

A Dish Best Served Cold From Manso

Another book, another mauling of Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe.
Part Two of a Two-Part review of "Reasonable Doubt" by Peter Manso

It's probably too late, the damage to his reputation already too immense, but O'Keefe should probably avoid all contact with anyone who will ever write a book.

First came the catty snarling about O'Keefe from Maria Flook,  whose "Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod" appeared in the spring of 2003, little more than a year after Christa Worthington was stabbed to death in her Truro cottage.

The image of O'Keefe answering the door for Flook clad only in a towel in an apparent clumsy come-on was so indelible that it became the basis for a hilarious  image of O'Keefe on the cover of the Cape Cod Voice newspaper.

The image of O'Keefe allegedly answering the door for Flook clad only in a towel in an apparent clumsy come-on was so indelible that it became the basis for a hilarious Photoshopped image of O'Keefe on the cover of the Cape Cod Voice newspaper.

O'Keefe's disparaging remarks about Worthington in "Invisible Eden" as a promiscuous "equal opportunity employer"  and "slob" eager to bed nearly anyone prompted immediate scorn and anger. The Worthington family petitioned the state attorney general to take O'Keefe off the case, leading O'Keefe to apologize to them and claim he'd been misquoted.

For Peter Manso, battling O'Keefe nearly landed him in prison on trumped-up gun charges, eventually dropped, in what came across as a blatant, ham-fisted attempt to silence a critic.

In the course of writing his new book, "Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial of Chris McCowen," Manso learned that "my own phone records had been grabbed without a subpoena or court order the day after Christa's body was found," a decision likely made as a result of Manso receiving a phone call from a despondent Worthington cousin after her body was found.

O'Keefe's disparaging remarks about Christy Worthington in as a promiscuous "equal opportunity employer"  and "slob" eager to bed nearly anyone prompted immediate scorn and anger.

It wasn't just his phone records pulled by the DA's office, Manso learned, but also those of his wife and at least 45 others "obtained via demand letters to a compliant Verizon."

Three years after Worthington's murder, the case still languishing, investigators conducted a controversial DNA sweep in Truro,  advising donors that their cooperation was voluntary while also letting known that the names of those who did not cooperate would be added to a "special list."

Although it was a DNA match that led to the arrest of Christopher McCowen, her garbageman, it wasn't the DNA sweep that hauled him in. What the public didn't know at the time, Manso writes, is that "the majority of the 150-odd swab collected were never even turned in for analysis. Rather, the samples languished in DA Michael O'Keefe's office until Christopher McCowen was arrested in April 2005, four months after the sweep, more than a year after McCowen's DNA was collected. It, too, had sat on a shelf in O'Keefe's corner office while Truro trembled."

DA's office would evolved into a fiefdom over the Cape and Islands

Manso goes back decades in describing how the DA's office would evolve into a fiefdom over the Cape and Islands, with power far exceeding that held by earlier prosecutors.

O'Keefe succeeded the late Phil Rollins, a popular glad-handing pol who served as district attorney for more than three decades, and for whom O'Keefe worked as prosecutor for 20 years.

Rollins, in turn, had succeeded another district attorney, Edmund Dinis, whose career was derailed by a single case --his slap-on-the-wrist prosecution of  Ted Kennedy after a passenger in his car, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned on Chappaquiddick in 1969.

At the time, the so-called "southern district" extended from Bristol County to the Cape and islands; in 1975, the more conservative Cape and Islands became a separate district with its own district attorney, thereby giving Republicans an advantage in controlling the office for decades to come.

Only two years into his first term, Rollins took the "unusual step" of assigning a state trooper to his office, according to Manso; "in time he assigned a dozen."

"The Crime Prevention and Control Unit -- CPAC -- vastly increased the DA's power by gutting traditional checks and balances," Manso writes. "On the Cape, CPAC was under the DA's thumb. State police had become the king's palace guards."

"A miasma of law-enforcement shortcuts running through the case like mold on a particularly smelly cheese."

Massachusetts state law also gives district attorneys jurisdiction over investigation of homicides instead of local police, a problematic arrangement. "In Massachusetts, murder is political because the cops are powerless," Manso quotes Cape journalist Jeff Blanchard. "If you call the state police or the locals, anywhere, anytime, they'll refer you to the district attorney."

With McCowen's arrest, O'Keefe finally had a suspect in Worthington's murder, one with weekly access to her property, a criminal record, restraining orders against him, and a DNA evidence proving physical contact with the victim.

In his dissection of McCowen's prosecution, Manso uncovered a "a miasma of law-enforcement shortcuts running through the case like mold on a particularly smelly cheese," all part of a post-9/11 culture he sees as paranoid on security and indifferent to civil liberties.

Running roughshod over the Fourth Amendment

Who was Anthony Smith? He was the son of Girard Smith, the elderly Truro man who saw a large dark truck or van speeding out of Worthington's driveway on the day before her body was found.

For example, lead state police investigator Chris Mason obtaining two vials of blood from deceased Truro resident Anthony Smith and "delivered to the crime lab for analysis without, it appears, a court order or family permission." Who was Anthony Smith? He was the son of Girard Smith, the elderly Truro man who saw a large dark truck or van speeding out of Worthington's driveway on the day before her body was found.

"Mason was covering all the bases, as he usually did, since he is a very thorough man," Manso writes. "But he ran roughshod over the Fourth Amendment in the process, displaying utter insensitivity to a parent's grief.  Smith, who lived with his father, the stubborn witness, had taken his own life."

After his detailed analysis of McCowen's trial, which was expected to last two weeks but dragged out five, largely due to defense attorney Robert George's doggedness, Manso turns at last to his nemesis, O'Keefe himself. A half-dozen other prosecutions under O'Keefe are found lacking, his fundraising practices and spending as DA called into question.

Manso's criticism of O'Keefe is vitriolic and withering --

The book which will keep DA O'Keefe awake for many nights to come. Buy it at one of these local bookstores or on Barnes & Noble here or on Amazon here.

The DA was smart, knew the law, and was as ambitious as anyone in local government. But he was a miserable man, childless and alone. His divorce had reinforced his innate misanthropy and his adolescent sexual longings. He'd been passed over for a judgeship while his ex-wife  was appointed to the district court bench. His drinking had accelerated to the point where, even as he targeted seventy-six-year-old "rapists," he was weaving in and out of mid-Cape bars, often during the late afternoon, unable to drive himself home. Worse, his choirboy upbringing had fostered an inflexible, black-and-white worldview that metastisized into the belief that he had a God-given right to make moral judgments. The agent of righteousness felt duty-bound to characterize Christa Worthington as a slut who'd take on the butcher, the baker, and the husbands of her friends, even as the fifty-seven-year-old harassed frightened teenage salesgirls amd took payoffs disguised as campaign contributions.

Kinda makes you want to shower, doesn't it?

It's worth noting that O'Keefe isn't alone in his take on Worthington -- turns out it's one of the few things he shares in common with Manso, who writes --

The Outer Cape's bohemian values played a role in Christa's life, but by her family's standards, she was normal. Promiscuity was in her DNA. She wasn't a bad or reckless person. She was a Worthington.

 As "Reasonable Doubt" hits the bookstores, O'Keefe faces possible indictment for his alleged role in political payoffs and illegal gambling on the Cape. O'Keefe has denied the allegations but they still hang over him, not yet resolved.

Suffice it to say, if O'Keefe ever finds himself in court as defendant and not prosecutor, Manso will be sitting up front taking notes, once again, his jaundiced eye not missing much.

Read Part One of this Review "Not an innocent man, but not a killer either" here.

Jack Coleman has been a reporter for several local newspapers including The Cape Cod Times. He covered the Christa Worthington murder trial for CapeCodTODAY.com and the New York Post. He is presently a regular contributor to Newsbusters.org.