Married a white woman https://www.facebook.com/ABC2020/vi...isit-her-husband-in-prison/10155455727889934/
Armed with a new defense attorney, Chris McCowen hopes for a new trial.
abcnews.go.com
'A Killing on the Cape': The Murder of Christa Worthington -- Episode 6
Armed with a new defense attorney, Chris McCowen hopes for a new trial.
ByMARK REMILLARD and LAUREN EFFRON
November 28, 2017, 10:03 PM
7:49
Accomplished fashion writer found stabbed to death at her home: Part 1
Christa Worthington, who worked for major magazines and publications like the New York Times and...
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An encore presentation of this "20/20" report will air on Friday, Dec. 28, 2018, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
This is Episode 6 of "A Killing on the Cape," a six-episode ABC Radio podcast and an ABC News "20/20" documentary. Watch the two-hour "20/20" documentary HERE.
For Episodes 1-5, please visit
http://abcnews.com/akillingonthecape.
Subscribe and listen to the podcast on our partners and platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, TuneIn, Stitcher and under the "Listen" tab on the ABC News app.
Episode 6: The Interview –
It’s been more than 10 years since Christopher McCowen was convicted of raping and murdering Christa Worthington in a case that rocked the Cape Cod area.
In that time, McCowen has been in three different prisons. His is currently being held at a medium security prison called Old Colony, located about a 50-minute drive south of Boston.
Every week, his wife Leslie McCowen makes the hour-long drive from her home in West Dennis to see Chris.
“He’s a very sweet guy, very quiet, very polite,” Leslie McCowen said of her husband. “We talk about our families… we talk a lot about my job and stuff. We play cards, play scrabble, eat, take pictures.”
Leslie McCowen said she first met Chris in the late ‘90s and didn’t know him very well before his arrest and conviction, but that afterward she became close with him.
“Chris used to hang out with my daughters and their crew,” she said. “He was at my house a few times, always very quiet, very polite, not like the rest of them.”
Leslie McCowen said she was taking classes at a community college when she heard on the radio that Chris McCowen had been arrested for the murder of Christa Worthington.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Leslie McCowen said. “I said to myself, ‘Aw, he’ll be out of there in no time. There’s no way in hell he killed anybody.’ … and I told my professor about it and I said, ‘There’s no way he killed anyone.’”
Worthington, a 46-year-old fashion writer and single mother, was found stabbed to death in her seaside cottage in Truro, Massachusetts, on Jan. 6, 2002, with her 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Ava, by her side, unharmed.
Fashion writer Christa Worthington at Ballston Beach in Truro, Mass., in August 2001.
Cape Cod Times/ZUMA Press/Newscom
McCowen worked as a garbage man on the Cape and had Worthington’s home on his trash route. At the time, Worthington’s murder was the highest profile case to hit the Cape in decades.
On Nov. 16, 2006, a jury found Chris McCowen guilty of first-degree murder, rape and aggravated burglary. He was given three life sentences, one for each of the charges he was convicted on, without the possibility of parole.
Christopher McCowen wipes away tears as he is sentenced after being convicted of rape and murder in the slaying of a fashion writer Christa Worthington, Nov. 16, 2006, in Barnstable, Mass.
AP
Leslie McCowen said she and Chris McCowen developed a relationship first through sharing letters, which then turned to phone calls, which turned into visits. Then the two married on May 1, 2014.
“The ceremony was kind of-- was very sweet. We had a female minister, and she said the vows,” Leslie McCowen said.
She calls their marriage “different,” and says she feels bad for what he has to go through in prison every day.
“He’s in there, and he shouldn’t be,” she said. “When you love someone, you love someone, and you take them as they are and they take you as you are.”
Leslie McCowen said the process of getting into the prison to see her husband is no easy task.
“The worst part is the waiting. Once you get there, you know, you pick a number, sit and wait, wait, wait, wait,” she said. “But if you get there light, right when the visits are starting, you can pretty much go right through.”
Leslie McCowen said she even started buying certain types of clothes that would make the process go faster.
“No hoods, no strings, no zipper,” she said. “I had to leave once because I had winter boots on, and it already turned into spring. One time I had to leave because I had a zipper. But now they tell you there’s a Walmart up there road. You can go buy proper clothes.”
Leslie McCowen is just one of a number of people who think that her husband was wrongfully convicted. She not only believes Chris McCowen didn’t get a fair trial, but that he’s innocent and will one day get out of prison.
“I can’t say I have a whole lot of faith in the system or even, sometimes the people here. I just know he did not kill Christa Worthington. That’s all I know,” Leslie McCowen said. “Sometimes the magnitude of what they’ve done to him really hit me when I see this prison. It’s really a travesty of justice, and he needs his life back. I hope they find the real killer or killers.”
Leslie McCowen is seen here driving to the Old Colony prison to see her husband, Christopher McCowen.
ABC News
Chris McCowen’s first appeal was denied in 2010. In that appeal, his then attorneys argued that his conviction should be overturned for several reasons, including that it was a mistake for the judge not to grant his defense’s request to move the trial's location after all the media attention, that a member of the grand jury, which indicted Chris McCowen, knew Christa Worthington, her daughter and Tony Jackett, and that it was improper for one of the jurors to be removed during deliberations.
The juror removed was Rachel Huffman, then 22.
“The removal of Rachel Huffman from the jury was disturbing,” said Chris McCowen’s former defense attorney Bob George. “Rachel Huffman, at the time, was seen as a pro-defense juror. It was also revealed at the time that Rachel Huffman was involved with an African American boyfriend, which came out in jury deliberations.”
The first weekend after deliberations began in mid-November 2006, Huffman’s boyfriend had been arrested in a drug-related shooting. Several jurors testified during a closed session that they had learned of the shooting on the news or by word of mouth from other jurors.
Without admonishing some of the jurors for exposing themselves to news coverage, Barnstable Superior Court Judge Gary Nickerson, who presided over the trial, decided they remained impartial and should continue deliberations.
But the next day, everything changed.
“The record in this case would show that Rachel Huffman was thrown off the jury because she had phone contact with her boyfriend,” George said.
On Nov. 14, 2006, the seventh day of deliberation, Huffman was told that the court heard an audio tape of phone calls she had with her boyfriend in which she had discussed the case and had made disparaging comments about police.
“They had a conversation that was recorded, and they threw her off the jury because she said a few things about the case,” said Beth Karas, an attorney and former Court TV correspondent who covered Chris McCowen’s trial. “They found that she couldn’t be trusted, I guess, couldn’t be fair anymore and she was bounced.”
“At the time, the jury had indicated that they were deadlocked after a few days,” Karas continued. “We didn’t know the breakdown, and it was assumed that Rachel Huffman was somebody holding out for acquittal. As it turned out, she was on the fence. She wasn’t sure if McCowen was guilty. there were two others holding out for acquittal, not Rachel Huffman.”
Huffman was one of three jurors who signed affidavits following McCowen’s trial alleging incidents of racial bias and bias against McCowen during deliberations.
7:28
What 2 jurors say happened during Chris McCowen trial deliberations: Part 9
After Chris McCowen was found guilty on all charges, his former defense attorney said some jurors a...
The appeal made its way up to Massachusetts’ highest court, which handed down its ruling in December 2010, more than three years after McCowen's guilty verdict.
Read the ruling HERE.
McCowen never testified at his trial, but at his sentencing, the court heard from him for the first time when he read a statement. McCowen said in his statement that he felt sorry for the Worthington family, for what had happened to Worthington and her daughter, "but all this time I've been innocent."
Having McCowen testify is something his former attorney Bob George said both he and McCowen agreed was too risky at the time.
“Christopher McCowen wouldn’t have been capable of facing cross examination because of his mental condition, because of his emotional condition,” George said. “There was no set of circumstances under which he could face a lengthy cross examination in which he would become confused and it would hurt his case.”
Since his conviction, McCowen has had one appeal and three motions for a new trial denied. Now, armed with a new defense attorney, McCowen is hoping to get new evidence that could warrant a new trial and overturn his conviction.
“At this point, Chris wants to get his story out there. Chris wants to explain… [he] regrets not testifying,” said his current attorney Gary Pelletier.
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections denied ABC News’ requests to interview McCowen in person. After several months, ABC News was able to talk to him by phone in August.
“There's a lot of speculation on the exact timeline of when she was killed, but I do understand where a lot of people think that I might have had something to do with it, but I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” McCowen told ABC News. “I’m not guilty of anything.”
“This is a nightmare for me,” he continued. “This is just one of the nightmares I’m trying to wake up from because I’m sorry that Christa is dead and everything, and I feel bad about that, but you know, it’s just—I was taken away from my kids. I was taken away from my family and everything too.”
on August 10, 2022