An extraordinary step taken by the police in a Cape Cod murder investigation raises a variety of opinions -- from solid support to scathing criticism.

01:01 AM EST on Saturday, January 15, 2005

BY TOM MOONEY
Journal Staff Writer

TRURO, Mass. -- Winter bestows a bare clarity on the northern end of Cape Cod.

Gone are the congested harbors and snarled traffic. In their place lie flawless vistas of chopped green water and sand-swept pavement. Add a dusting of snow and suddenly the rooflines of inconspicuous retreats emerge from the hollows of pitch pine and scrub oak.

A police cruiser swings out of the vacant parking lot along Pomet Harbor, rustling the gulls. The cruiser climbs a rise on Depot Road, splashing slush by an unplowed driveway as it passes. It's an otherwise unremarkable drive leading through the trees, but everyone in this small town knows what happened at the end of it.

Three winters ago, Christa Worthington, a globe-trotting fashion writer, was found stabbed to death in the kitchen of her bungalow. Her 2-year-old daughter, Ava, was found by her side on the floor, unharmed.

Now in this season of stark exposures, investigators are taking an extraordinary step -- some call it outrageous -- to find her killer.

Last week they began canvassing the few public places that remain open here in the winter -- the post office, the two stores, the town dump -- asking the men of Truro to donate DNA samples.

From the swabs of saliva they collect, investigators hope to match DNA to semen found on Worthington's body.

The police are not saying that the man who had sex with Worthington before she died is her killer. But they believe he knows more about her death than he has said so far -- and that he is a local man.

"More probably than not he is a member of the Truro-area community, with some familiarity with the victim," says Truro Police Chief John J. Thomas.

Truro, whose population swells to more than 20,000 in summer, has 2,169 year-round residents who tough it out through the lean, desolate months of winter.

Investigators had collected nearly 100 DNA swabs by Sunday when the canvassing was temporarily suspended because of the poor weather, said Thomas.

Journal photo / Bob Thayer

Ken Wheeler, 56, above, says he volunteered for a DNA test in the murder case of Christa Worthington. ``If you've got nothing to hide, then why not?'' he says. Three years ago, Worthington was found stabbed in the kitchen of her home off Depot Lane in Truro, Mass.

Some men, like Ken Wheeler, a 56-year-old self-employed electrician, gave his DNA sample without reservation when politely asked Sunday at the dump by a state police detective and a Truro officer.

"If you've got nothing to hide, then why not?" he says. "I just hope we can find the person."

But others, like Shaun Pfeiffer, who runs a picture-framing business in Provincetown, calls the DNA collection of roughly 1,000 men in town ridiculous. He has no intention of giving a sample if asked.

"If somebody did it, are they going to volunteer to give a DNA sample?" he asks. "It seems kind of silly."

The American Civil Liberties Union calls the DNA collection a "serious intrusion on personal privacy" and has asked investigators to stop.

In a letter sent to Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, the ACLU raised questions about the voluntariness of the DNA collection effort, noting statements by O'Keefe that investigators would take note of those men who declined.

"This is a particularly insidious form of coercion, because it attaches a penalty to the assertion of one's constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches," says Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Rose also called the DNA collection a waste of taxpayer money, noting each test would cost about $100 to analyze, and yet it "has virtually no chance of helping to solve the murder."

O'Keefe, who is handling the investigation, and Chief Thomas say they have no intention of stopping the DNA collection and may even expand it, eventually, into the communities of Wellfleet and Provincetown.

So few businesses and stores are open here in winter that residents often travel into other towns for groceries or to socialize at area bars.

"You have to start somewhere," says Thomas.

Mass collection of DNA has occurred in only a few other instances in the United States and with little success. Thomas said investigators decided to try it in Truro after meeting with FBI profilers in Virginia.

BECAUSE WORTHINGTON was killed in the winter, the profilers believed her murderer was among the small population of year-round residents. So they waited until the anniversary of her murder, Jan. 6, 2002, to start asking for DNA samples.

Investigators had been collecting DNA selectively since the murder, said O'Keefe.

Among those tested were Tim Arnold, Worthington's former boyfriend and a children's book author, who found Worthington's body when he stopped by on Jan. 6, 2002, to return a flashlight.

Tony Jackett, the area's shellfish warden, who fathered Worthington's daughter, also provided a DNA sample early on.

Both men have cooperated with the authorities.

Investigators say the DNA collected will be destroyed after being tested against the evidence in Worthington's murder.

But many local men, such as Tom Peters, 56, who wears a Siberian fur cap while pumping gas at the local Citgo station, are skeptical.

"I don't want to be in a database somewhere," he says. "Databases can be abused."

Fred Simonin owns the Highland Grill pizza shop, where two police officers pulled up stools last week and asked customers to swab their mouths. He says the DNA sampling is a small price to pay if it works.

"Basically it boils down to: We've got a murderer in town. Most people want to catch him."

Still, since the killing first garnered international attention -- spinning off a movie and a sensational book, Invisible Eden, with details of Worthington's love life -- Truro residents have gone about their lives.

"There's no place like Truro in the whole world," exclaims Kitty Stevens, a retired Long Island guidance counselor, as she drops off her garbage, and then a box of Brazilian chocolates for the men at the dump.

It's only during these anniversaries that the murder becomes a topic of conversation again.

And perhaps, she says, that is the intent of the police.

"Because really the whole thing is a fiasco," Stevens says of the DNA sampling. Stevens attended the Council on Aging meeting the other day and says one of her friends raised the question: "Isn't it possible a jealous woman could have done that?"

Her theory, however, was quickly shot down by others armed with hearsay: the wound, caused by a pair of scissors, was too deep to have been caused by a woman, they said.

Investigators won't discuss specifics of the crime.

Arnold, Worthington's former boyfriend, believes the murderer had only loose ties to the area.

"My personal opinion is he's long gone," he says. "He could have been working here for a while. He could have been on a boat fishing. That's my guess. But I don't know if that's what the police think."

ELIZABETH GROOM lives in the same house on Truro Center Road where she was born 72 years ago. Over time she has filled 170 scrapbooks with local history, a compilation rivaling the clip morgue of an area newspaper.

Her white, three-ring binder of newspaper clippings on the Worthington murder stands 4 inches thick, "and I've started another one now with this DNA thing."

She says the DNA collection seems a desperate attempt to solve a case that some people are resigned will never be solved.

But then history reminds her of the case of Linda Silva, a state social worker gunned down just a few miles north in Provincetown in 1996. It took eight years, but investigators last September finally won a conviction in her murder.

Compared with Groom, Dayna Grzywoc is a newcomer to this "village of the damned," as she refers to Truro.

She and her husband, a finish carpenter, moved to town 11 years ago from Springfield.

"This girl had such a convoluted sex life," she says of Worthington, who was 46. The killer could be anyone. "She lived in Paris, she lived in London -- you don't know who could have come into town."

On the other hand, she says, rumor has it that little Ava recognized the killer.

Who truly knows?

"Truro likes to pride itself on knowing everything about everyone. But I don't care who you are. If you want to hide something, you can do it."

Even in winter.