Reasonable Doubt: Peter Manso Unpacks the Christa Worthington Murder Case

In January 2002, 46-year-old Christa Worthington was found stabbed to death in the kitchen of her Truro, Cape Cod home, 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 knew her.

Yet in 2005, investigators inexplicably arrested Christopher McCowen, a 24-year-old African-American garbage collector with an IQ of 76. The sole evidence against him was that he might have had consensual sex with Worthington prior to her murder. He was convicted after a five-week trial replete with conflicting testimony, accusations of crime scene contamination, and police misconduct—and was condemned to three lifetime sentences in prison with no parole.

Never before has a homicide trial been refracted so clearly through the prism of those who engineered it and bestselling author and biographer Peter Manso is determined to rectify what has become one of the most grossly unjust and corrupt trials and convictions in modern history. In his riveting new book, Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial of Chris McCowen, he bares the anatomy of a horrific murder—as well as the ensuing political corruption and racism that took place in one of America’s most privileged playgrounds, Cape Cod.

Controversy has always surrounded Peter Manso’s books, including his biographies of Norman Mailer and Marlon Brando, and his provocative tome about the colorful people who put Provincetown, Mass., on the map. His Reasonable doubt is no exception. It’s a no-holds-barred, exhaustively researched and vividly accessible account of not only Christa’s murder, but also of the botched investigation and following trial that was rife with racial bias.