Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial

Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial of Chris McCowen

In January 2002, forty-six-year-old Christa Worthington was found stabbed to death in the kitchen of her Truro, Cape Cod, cottage, her curly-haired toddler clutching her body. A former Vassar girl and scion of a prominent local family, Christa had abandoned a glamorous career as a fashion writer for a simpler life on the Cape, where she had an affair with a married fisherman and had his child. After her murder, evidence pointed toward several local men who had known her.

Yet in 2005, investigators arrested Christopher McCowen, a thirty-four-year-old African-American garbage collector with an IQ of 76. The local headlines screamed, â€œBlack Trash Hauler Ruins Beautiful White Familyâ€ and â€œBlack Murderer Apprehended in Fashion Writer Slaying,â€ while the sole evidence against McCowen was a DNA match showing that heâ€™d had sex with Worthington prior to her murder. There were no fingerprints, no witnesses, and although the state medical examiner acknowledged there was no evidence of rape, the defendant was convicted after a five-week trial replete with conflicting testimony, accusations of crime scene contamination, and police misconductâ€”and was condemned to three lifetime sentences in prison with no parole.

Rarely has a homicide trial been refracted so clearly through the prism of those who engineered it, and in Reasonable Doubt, bestselling author and biographer Peter Manso is determined to rectify what has become one of the most grossly unjust verdicts in modern trial history. In his riveting new book he bares the anatomy of a horrific murderâ€”as well as the political corruption and racism that appear to be endemic in one of Americaâ€™s most privileged playgrounds, Cape Cod.

Exhaustively researched and vividly accessible, Reasonable Doubt is a no-holds-barred account of not only Christa Worthingtonâ€™s murder but also of a botched investigation and a trial that was rife with bias. Manso dug deep into the case, and the results were explosive. The Cape DA indicted the author, threatening him with fifty years in prison.

The trial and conviction of Christopher McCowen for rape and murder should worry American citizens, and should prompt us to truly examine the lip service we pay to the presumption of innocence . . . and to reasonable doubt. With this explosive and challenging book Manso does just that.
Country USA
Brand Atria Books
Manufacturer Atria Books
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2011-07-05
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780743296663

Country	USA
Brand	Atria Books
Manufacturer	Atria Books
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2011-07-05
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780743296663

Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial of Chris McCowen

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