BARNSTABLE, Mass., Jan. 9 (UPI) -- A $25,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the killer of international fashion writer Christa Worthington, it was announced Thursday.
The single mother was found stabbed to death in her secluded Cape Cod home in Truro, Mass., last January, her infant daughter unharmed and trying to nurse.
"We believe that Christa Worthington was involved in an intimate relationship with a person prior or relatively contemporaneous with her death," said Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, who announced the reward at a news conference.
"We are requesting the public's assistance in seeking the identity of this person," O'Keefe said, adding people can call information into a phone number dedicated to the investigation.
The reward money was raised by relatives and friends of Worthington, who gave up her career writing about fashion for some of the world's top magazines and newspapers to return to Cape Cod in 1998 to care for her cancer-stricken mother.
O'Keefe said based on physical and forensic evidence, investigators believe Worthington had sex with someone around the time she was slain.
So far, however, DNA from a semen sample reportedly obtained from the scene has not been matched to her known acquaintances.
Worthington, 46, was found dead by ex-boyfriend Tim Arnold on Sunday, Jan. 6, 2002, two days after she was last seen alive.
Her baby girl, Ava, then just more than 2 years old, was discovered on her mother's bloody body.
In 1998 Worthington abandoned her career writing about fashion for such publications as Elle, Vogue, The New York Times and the Times of London, in order to take care of her mother, who died in 1999 a week before Ava was born.
Arnold, 45, told investigators he came to the house to return a flashlight and found the rear door smashed in and Worthington's body on the floor.
Another lover questioned was Tony Jackett, 52, a married father of six who is Ava's biological father.
Both men claim to have passed lie-detector tests.
(Tips can be phoned in to 800-784-1707.)
