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Trial photo pool
Tim Arnold spent several hours on the stand again on Thursday. |
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McCowen murder trial Day 2
By Michael Iacuessa
Banner Correspondent
Outside the courtroom the number of media trucks increases daily. Inside, the theatrics are intensifying. If jurors really did know little of the Christa Worthington murder before this week, they are likely beginning to understand the hoopla now.
On Thursday morning, former lover Tim Arnold testified authorities told him only last week his DNA matched semen found on a brown blanket in the Worthington home. The blanket, normally on Worthington’s sofa, at some point was used to cover her dead body.
Defense attorney Robert George seized the moment to wonder aloud why the match to Arnold, who discovered the body, was not taken as seriously as that of defendant Christopher McCowen.
Then, later in the day, after Jan Worthington, Christa’s cousin and the first EMT to the scene, took the stand, George blasted her for having profited off the murder.
Jan Worthington, who has previously written screenplays for television shows and two Danielle Steele movies, admitted trying to sell the rights to her cousin’s story as soon as she could after the murder.
“I sold it early on so no one would exploit it,” she said.
Jan Worthington made $60,000 for a screenplay for Lifetime and another $20,000 for a HBO documentary on the unsolved murder. Under questioning by George, she revealed she never set aside any of the money as a reward for finding the killer or for a trust fund for Ava, Christa’s young daughter.
She said she planned to establish a scholarship at the Truro Central School under Christa’s name if the movie was ever made. It was not.
Court adjourned for the day at that point.
Jurors had plenty to mull over from the day’s testimony.
Arnold, who was on the stand for several hours, beginning on Wednesday, was forced to relive both finding the dead body and his often troubled relationship with Worthington.
One day after a $25,000 reward was posted in the case and he discovered police suspected him, Arnold checked into a mental healthy facility in Hyannis. While in bed there, state police officers Christopher Mason and William Burke interrogated him for three hours. Arnold was on medication for depression and to induce sleep.
George tried to establish a pattern of coercive questioning by the two detectives. The attorney is using a defense of false confession in order to lessen a damaging statement McCowen gave to police that he was at the scene of the crime.
During the interview, Mason told Arnold that police believed he was capable of committing the murder despite having undergone brain surgery six months early. Although Arnold told them he did not commit the crime, he added “they kept repeating that I had.”
Partly because his mental state deteriorating after that interview, Arnold was later transferred to Pembroke Hospital under a closer suicide watch.
The 48-year old Arnold, who has numbness in parts of his body and keeps one eye closed in order to focus, had to prop one arm up against the judge’s bench while testifying. He refused a chair when offered by Judge Gary Nickerson.
Meanwhile, prosecutor Robert Welsh methodically continued outlining the case against McCowen, including evidence of rape as well as murder. Both Arnold and Jan Worthington testified that Christa Worthington’s right foot was jammed into the lower part of a bookcase and her legs apart when she was discovered on the floor of her hallway.
Robert Arnold, Tim’s father, who was with his son when the body was discovered, also testified Thursday. Robert Arnold said he did not spend time looking at Worthington’s body as he found it unpleasant. He said he had to steady himself by keeping his hands against the wall.
“I’m a veterinarian and I’ve seen death before but not in humans,” he said.
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In the News
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Oct 19th, 2006