MA- Is there reasonable doubt in the Christa Worthington murder case?
The Journalist Joins The Defense
Three years after Worthington’s murder, police arrested Christopher McCowen.
McCowen was a trash collector in Truro. He is black, and reportedly has an I.Q. of 76. In 2006, McCowen was tried and found guilty of the rape and murder of Christa Worthington.
Three years after Worthington’s murder, police arrested Christopher McCowen.
McCowen was a trash collector in Truro. He is black, and reportedly has an I.Q. of 76. In 2006, McCowen was tried and found guilty of the rape and murder of Christa Worthington.
It’s at this point where Manso’s relationship to the case, and the charges he levels in his book, cross over from complication to controversy.
“I don’t believe he did it,” Manso said.
But, Manso isn’t a disinterested journalistic observer of this case. He was actively assisting the defense team during McCowen’s trial, providing them with research he was gathering for the book.
Manso does not deny collaborating with the defense. But he brushes off any problem such a partnership might pose to his objectivity.
“Had the defendant in this trial not been black but been white, I believe that there would not have been guilty verdict,” Manso said. “There would have been at the very least a hung jury, if not an acquittal.”
Manso is not a man to pull his punches. His book is a unflinching indictment of what he believes is a deep-seeded culture of racism on Cape Cod. The Boston Globe once quoted him as saying the “Cape is a suburb of redneck Mississippi.”
“There’s no way of understanding this trial and the outcome of this trial without dealing with the issue of race,” Manso said. “There was no mention of rape in the three years of investigation. The medical examiner said there was not evidence of rape. So why rape? Well, because this guy was black. And also because the prosecutors needed a motive for the killing.”
Critics point to such bombastic pronouncements as evidence of Manso’s personal bias in this case, and that his enmity seems especially acidic in his attack on Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe.
O’Keefe indicted Manso on a dozen firearms charges, unrelated to the Worthington case, in 2008.
Still, Manso asserts that there were holes in the prosecution’s case against McCowen. Chief among them, there was no physical evidence tying him to the act of the murder. No fingerprints. No witnesses. No weapon.
However, as Manso admits, there was DNA evidence at the scene.
The book "Reasonable Doubt" by Peter Manso is a must read for private investigators.
http://www.amazon.com/Reasonable-Doubt-Fashion-Writer-McCowen/dp/0743296664
http://radioboston.wbur.org/2011/08/09/peter-manso-worthington