True Crime Vault: A Killing on the Cape

20/20 - ABC News

A glamorous fashion writer, Krista Worthington, was brutally murdered in her Cape Cod home in 2002, leaving her young daughter unharmed beside her body. The case shocked the isolated town and led to a controversial trial

Key takeaways

• Murder occurred in secluded Truro, Cape Cod

Transcript preview

I'm Harvey Guillen and this is killer stories. Every Monday I'm cutting the lights and telling you a bedtime story. Except these stories are all real. We're talking brazen heist, devastating cons, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories. So join me for new episodes of killer stories with Harvey Gien every Monday. Welcome back to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Here on Cape Cod, the summer is wonderful. This is a place where people leave their doors open. Oh my goodness, we have a murderer amongst us. Jealousy, anger, secret, sex, and money. That was all in this story. How does a glamorous fashion writer end up in Cape Cod dead in a bungalow? There were all kinds of rumors as to who did it. Who did the police question everybody? I couldn't imagine who could have been to. It was January 6, 2002. I was an EMT on the Truro Rescue Squad. The pager that I had, I went off and said that we had a rescue call for an unresponsive female at 50 Depot Road. And I thought, gee, I think that's the Worthington residence. the waist down, lying on her back, very dead. She was stabbed through the chest. Her cell phone was left on the kitchen counter with just the digit 9 punched in as if she might have been trying to dial 911. 46 year old Krista Worthington, an accomplished fashion writer, was found murdered Sunday in her truer home. It was everyone's worst nightmare. A woman alone in her home with her two year old child. beautiful cottage in Cape God overlooking the Atlantic Ocean being found dead. It involved a single woman who was a mother with an out-of-wedlock child, fathered by a local Lothario murdered with her baby daughter left beside her for 36 hours unattended by anyone. Her two and a half year old daughter Ava was found unharmed near the body. She had been with her mother's body for more than 24 hours. There's some evidence that she had had taken her a sippy cup and tried to feed her mother and she's trying to wake her mother up. Ava had gotten a washcloth and gone, wet it somehow, gotten up on the stool, turned on the forcet, swabbed her mother's body. You know, she had been trying, she had been trying to clean up her mother. Heartbreaking stuff. The cape had never seen or witnessed an event like this ever. And it was big because it happened in Truro and these things don't happen in Truro on Cape Cod. The summer is wonderful. It is warm. All of the Patty Page songs about Cape Cod beaches, the sun sets, all true. If you're funder sand dunes and salty air, And there for beauty, for beaches, for wonderful fishing, for shell fishing, for solitary walks. There's just nothing like it anywhere that I've ever been. People like to describe the Cape as like an arm. And Provincetown is at the very end of the arm. And Truro is sort of at the wrist. Cape Cod alone is bucolic, but Truro is really. They call Truro the Garden of Eden of Massachusetts. Furo is known today as the most rural town in Cape Cod. We have no town center, we have no streets, we have a post office and a general store. And the people that see you every day are the same people. Very much like Groundhog Day. The same trash guy, the same milk guy, the same grusher. I mean this is a place where people leave their doors open. This is not a place where people get killed. here in Truro where they are rich in property. Krista inherited her mother's weather-worn cottage. It was here that she came in search of solace, but instead it was where she was savagely murdered. Secret, sex, and money. That was all in this story. But the story I was interested in was the real story. Who was Krista Worthington? child. She grew up in Hingham, Mass, which is south of Boston, kind of Tony suburb. Her father was a Harvard educated lawyer, and it was a very privileged upbringing. After high school, Krista went to Vassar. I was a Vassar classmate of Krista Wurington. Krista and I were in this English thesis class. Krista was someone you would know because she was so short but interesting looking and pretty. She was brilliant. in class. I mean the first few decades of her life outside of college were high fashion, high society. She began a career in fashion. She actually was the Bureau of Chief in Paris for Women's Wear Daily. She wrote for all the major magazines, Cosmo, Harper's Bazaar. New York Times, she worked for L magazine. I met Krista when we were editors together at L magazine. 1990. The devil wears Prada 25 years later is more or less what the life was like at the magazine. Nice. Good, pleasure. You love the show? It was kind of an ongoing party disguised as a publication. She interviewed people like Eve St. Laurent, Martha Stewart's. She even dated Anderson Cooper's brother. Chris is writing, oh, she could make anything just sound like magic. She interviewed the most boring thing in the world was all. all of a sudden, fresh and exciting, smooth and refined pro style. The headscarf reveals as it conceals. The louder the go away message, the more audible, that come hither. Isn't that great? New York City. There was nothing directly to predict that this could have happened to her. The question on a lot of people's mind is how does a glamorous fashion writer end up in some small town in Cape Cod dead in a bungalow? There are the immediate investigation of all of the relationships that the victim has and has had as well as putting together a of the tracing of her movements in the last days and hours. There was nothing to indicate who it might have been. The house at 50 Depot Road is isolated. It isn't something that you happen to walk by because it sits well in on a long driveway. So you would have no idea of any activity going on in there. I couldn't imagine who could have killed her. I couldn't even think of it. There was so much talk about who did it and who had the motive. Believe me, everyone in this story had a motive. The whole thing was just really bizarre. January 6, 2002, Worthington homicide scene. This is the first murder in this town in 30 years. With all the media attention surrounding this, he's going to put enormous pressure on the police department to solve this and solve it fast. I was told by the state police that Tim Arnold was their number one suspect, her last living boyfriend. He lived next door. He's the one who found the body. Why would he go there that night? Is that true that he was going to return a flashlight? 911? What is your emergency? It's Crystal Wither. I'm sure she's dead. When he returns with more of a killing on the cape. The weather turns vicious. The loneliness, the sense of isolation definitely builds. The quiet is so thorough, so deep that I think it scares certain people. Cape is not a particularly popular place in the winter because it's cold and it's isolated. I do feel storm-bound. The cabin fever so intense it's become part of my metabolism pumping like blood. This crime happened in the dead of winter in January. There are even less people around in this small town. Everyone is thinking, oh my goodness, we have a murderer amongst us. After the murder of Krista Worthington, there was this free floating anxiety everywhere. People sort of locking their doors overnight. It was a transformation. Tim Arnold was the number one suspect in the first year of the investigation. Tim Arnold was a former boyfriend of Krista Worthington. They were actually broken up. The police, they always take a close look at the people who were in the orbit. He was a boyfriend. He was an ex-lover. Sometimes that generates hard feelings. So that was one. The police, they always take a close look at the people who were in the orbit. He was a boyfriend. He was an ex-lover. Sometimes that generates hard feelings. a close look at the person who found the body. It was a Sunday afternoon. It was an important Patriots football game going on. In to the end zone. Tim Arnold says he was watching the game with his father and his father suggested that he return a flashlight to Krista. His father drove him to Krista's house. papers. Immediately makes him wonder why are papers unopened. And he looked through the kitchen door window and saw Krista lying on the floor. She was totally still. She wasn't even moving. We pushed his way into the house and he went and he found Ava next to her mother and he leaned over and he touched Krista and she was cold. He pushed his way into the house and he went and he found Ava next to her mother and he leaned over and he touched Krista and she was cold. He picked up Ava and she knew him. She responded to him. He takes her in her arms and he takes the child out to his father and he turns to his father and says, Krista is D-E-A-D. Doesn't want to say it out loud. returning a flashlight to her. I saw a light on. A two-year-old daughter was there nursing on her body. Okay, I'll send them right over. The police took Tim Arnold back to the station to question him that night. They spent some time with him and then they drove him home. And he walked into the house and his father was in front of the TV and I was very shocked when Tim told me that his father said to Tim, Tim, did you do it? ask them that. From that moment on the whole town was asking questions like that. Did Tim do it? It's clear that Tim Arnold and Krista had a tumultuous relationship. They had an intense relationship. He lived with her for a while. Ava started to call him Tim-mom, so he wasn't just Tim, he was Tim mom. He was Tim mom. He was very sensitive. He was Tim mom. He was Tim mom. He's very sensitive. He was Tim mom. artistic, well-spoken, gentle person. I think one reason Krista connected with Tim Arnold is that he was literary. He wrote a couple books. He wrote this book, The Winter Mittens, which is a children's book, but it's a very strange little children's book. It's very dark. When she pulled on the right mitten to take it off, it would not move. She pulled frantically at them with her teeth. But the winter mittens held fast to her hands. as if with a life of their own. Tim Arnold and Krista would fight. Tim said that she criticized everything. She would criticize him for humming. And she would say she didn't want Ava to become a hummer. So he couldn't even hum. They had broken up, but he still seemed to have affection for Krista. Now he lived nearby with his father only a hundred yards away. Tim told the police that he was out running one day. and he stopped by Krista's house and knocked on the door, didn't get an answer. So he walks around and he looks in a window. And she apparently got extremely upset with him. Krista had voicemail left on her answering machine. Now they were left by Tim and they seemed to show that he was upset with their relationship. Well I think you've made it very clear where you stand on the issue of friendship so I at this point don't expect me to be around it. If you want it to call to try to arrange for time for me to see Ava, that would be fine. I'll see what I can do. But I don't really think that we should see each other, even briefly. Bye. There was a way in which she talked about Tim Arnold that maybe he snapped. And when Perserk, it seemed like he had a motive because she pushed him away. They kept painting Tim Arnold as the jilted lover who wanted her so badly that he would take her life to prevent her from being with another man. It affected him a lot. It was devastating. To be under suspicion is a terrible thing. He told me that the State Police came over once and really grilled him. You know, you get a jab from one side and then a right hook from the other, you know, more than once he would say something like I had not killed Krista and he said they would come right back and say, oh yes you did. Tim is a logical person to look at, but there was just nothing to support that he killed her. And so they moved on to other suspects. Truro is a small town, and Krista wasn't really a small town girl. She had a very complicated love life. Tim Arnold wasn't the only person who Krista had been involved with relatively recently. And most importantly, Tim Arnold was not the father of her child. They have to look at the father of Krista's baby. The local shellfish. She knew that she was getting herself ensnared in a big angry horn and snest. She didn't care. Definitely. Tony had a motive. The initial thought, it has to be this guy. He has everything to lose. to know the victim. What's going on in their life? What is their personality? And you look at her life in New York. What went on in those relationships? When I first met Krista, she reminded me of kind of an old soul. There was something sort of ethereal about her, maybe a little wistful and mysterious. The paradox of Krista Worthington was that she presented as somebody who was really on top of things. who was elegant and refined, but there was a way in which emotionally she was disorganized, disorderly, undisciplined. She was no mild-mannered timid soul. She was an obsessive personality. She obsessed about books. She obsessed about money. She obsessed about sex. There was no other way to describe it. The people that she was with became stranger and weirder. She was involved with a guy named Thomas Churchwell, who was a magician. During the time that I was with Christopher, I was known as the amazing target. I would go to a bar called The Barfly on 23rd Street. She would go and sit with her girlfriends and watch me perform. deeply helpless and vulnerable about her. She had those eyes that would melt you. She brought out the protective feelings in friends, especially male friends. Probably had melted every man that she was wit. Krista was somebody who was consumed with regret. There was always this regret elf sitting on her shoulder whispering in her ear. Krista began to regret regret. that she hadn't had a child, and so she began the process of trying to get herself pregnant. I later found out that we were having a sexual relationship for Krista to have a child. So we just broke away from each other. Crystal went public about her desire as a single woman to have a baby. This was the 1990s at a time when women didn't really talk about these types of things. selfish to try to have a child in vitro at age 40. There is at the moment no father for a child of mine, no husband for me, and what if there never is? I have to stare the scenario in the face. And to my surprise, it hasn't killed me. It was a defiant side of her. I was very surprised that she'd gone so public with this. She went on a national TV show, the Lisa show. Trying to figure out how to be the best parent to your child, There is no father. And then Krista received a devastating diagnosis. She was told that she was in early menopause and likely would never be able to have a child. The worst has happened, the thing I dreaded and never really believed would happen, and yet always knew would. It seems she wanted a change in her life. Krista decides to leave New York City to go to Cape Cobb. Avocato, we know that not all mattresses are created equal, while other beds trapheat. Hours sets it free. Made without polyurethane foams and crafted with natural latex cotton and wool, wreathable, comfortable and supportive. No overheating, just clean organic. Save 15% on our award-winning mattresses this July 4th sale. Avocato Celebrate Organic. Shop at Avocato Matres.com. 4th, Disney celebrates America 250, 24 hours non-stop live all across the country, and David Muir is right there. 250 years of America, more than 24 hours on the air. This is going to be one extraordinary event. And you can watch it live on ABC, Disney Plus, Hulu, E-SPN, Nat Geo, FX and Freiform, an epic and historic celebration. Tell him Stephen A. It's America's 250th birthday party. No one throws a party like Disney. Krista grew up going to the Cape in the summer. Churo was a safe haven for her. The Worthington family was Truro royalty. They went way back in time. This is Worthingtonville, you know, the Worthingtons have houses all around there as they