Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Three years after Christa Worthington's murder,

investigators move in on the man

they believe to be her killer. [siren wails]

HOLT: Police finally believe they know

who killed fashion writer Christa Worthington.

[suspenseful music plays]

NEWS ANCHOR: He was found through a DNA sample

he voluntarily provided.

STEVE LATART: When news came out

of who the DNA was a match to,

the town was floored.

It was the last person they'd ever expect,

the town garbageman.

It was a guy named Christopher McCowen.

REPORTER: Did you kill Christa?

NARRATOR: With Christopher McCowen's arrest,

the town of Truro breathed a sigh of relief.

But McCowen's story was complicated.

- Christopher McCowen's story kept on changing

while speaking to investigators.

It started off as he didn't know Christa.

Then, he said that they had relations.

And then it changed one more time.

- McCowen told the cops

the night of the murder, he was at a party

with his friend Jeremy Frazier.

MANSO: He was too drunk to drive.

Frazier drove him over to Christa's

'cause he wanted to have sex

with Christa.

McCowen claims he and Christa are on the living room couch

while Jeremy Frazier

is robbing Christa's belongings.

McCowen says

Frazier leaves, Christa comes outside,

screaming, "I want my stuff back."

[haunting music plays]

LATART: McCowen said Frazier

turned around and punched her in the face.

And Chris admits that he also did hit her, too.

[suspenseful music playing]

♪

MANSO: McCowen claims Frazier runs back to the house...

LATART: McCowen said that he could hear a scuffle

from outside the house.

And a few minutes later, Jeremy came outside and said,

"Let's get out of here."

MANSO: They needed Frazier to contradict

the un-tape-recorded interview

with McCowen.

NARRATOR: Jeremy Frazier denied

ever being at Christa's house that night.

Plus, he had an alibi.

A friend, who initially denied being with him that night,

later changed his story.

Frazier was never charged, and McCowen was on the hook.

LATART: McCowen, years later, would say

that he never actually said that he and Frazier

were at Christa's house the night she was killed.

According to him, it was the police that said that.

MANSO: They had arrested McCowen,

they had a DNA match, they were gonna put him away.

NARRATOR: The prosecutor needed to connect

the DNA to the murder, so they called it rape,

added burglary, and charged McCowen with all three.

BAILIFF: Court, all rise.

NARRATOR: The trial for Christopher McCowen

immediately devolved into a circus of stereotypes.

[dramatic music playing]

- Most people on the Cape

refused to accept that Christa would ever have sex

with a black man, let alone a black garbageman.

The defense in some ways used

the assumptions that the investigators

had been making about Christa's life all along,

that everybody in the town

believed that this woman would have sex with anybody.

And so, if you said she wouldn't have sex

with a poor black man,

that you were essentially being racist.

It was a smart argument for them to make,

after so many years of the narrative being hammered home

of Christa as this unsatisfiable

femme fatale, promiscuous, seductive woman.

- She has been so exploited in the courtroom.

The whole trial just became kind of really icky,

disgraceful.

Um, I felt terrible for her, I felt terrible for her daughter.

CARROLL: She was a mom and she was a friend.

She was a really talented writer.

And they were only seeing this one aspect of her.

NARRATOR: In the end, Christa's character was smeared

all over again.

And the stereotypes around Chris persisted anyway.

- Court is now in session, please be seated.

- After eight days of deliberation...

...the jury finds McCowen

guilty of murder, rape and burglary.

He's given three concurrent life sentences

without parole for his crimes.

NARRATOR: Christopher McCowen maintains his innocence,

continuing to appeal for a new trial.

But for Christa Worthington,

the question of justice goes beyond his conviction.

Her legacy landed in the hands of a small town

who forgot she was a real person.

CARROLL: When we pick apart a woman's sexuality

and decide that we're going to judge her life after the fact,

we take away some really elemental part of her humanity.

In the end, it doesn't matter

who Christa was having sex with.

It doesn't matter who she had a child with,

if he was married, if he wasn't.

Christa's murder was not her fault.

NARRATOR: Christa Worthington once said

she wasn't afraid of dying.

Her greatest fear? Never having lived.