The DNA Dragnet

Sunday, Jan. 16, 2005 By AMANDA RIPLEY THEUNIS BATES; MARC HEQUET; RUTH LANEY

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In the summer of 1847, a panicked mother in a small village in Barnstable, Mass., on Cape Cod, reported her 10-week-old son missing. The townsfolk fanned out to search for him. Within hours, his body was found floating in the harbor. Because no strangers were visiting that day, the villagers knew the killer was one of them. At the funeral the next day, each resident was asked to approach the tiny open coffin, lay hands on the body and declare his or her innocence, a scene described by Evan J. Albright in his book Cape Cod Confidential. The villagers were looking for signs of guilt. They had found none, and only the boy's family remained. His mother at first recoiled at the idea of touching her dead son. Then, as she did so, she yanked her hands away from the corpse as if they had been scalded. "I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" she blurted out. The village had found the murderer.

A small seaside town about an hour north of Barnstable began another unsparing manhunt this month in hopes of solving a three-year-old murder. Police in Truro, Mass., intend to collect the DNA of every one of the town's 790 males. After that, the cops may cast a wider net, reaching neighboring towns. They started by approaching men at Truro's few outposts--the post office, the pizza place, the grocery store--and politely asking each if they could swipe a lollipop-size swab inside his cheek. It's strictly voluntary, and the Truro men can say no. Then again, the police are taking the license-plate numbers of all the men they approach, and will be noting those who refuse the test.

Fifteen years ago, it was believed that such mass DNA collections--which began in Europe--would never catch on in the U.S., with its stalwart protections against invasive search and seizure. But the temptation to solve unspeakable crimes, particularly ones involving children, has proved powerful. Truro's is at least the 19th DNA dragnet in the U.S. As testing becomes faster and cheaper, such collections are becoming more frequent. And the debate about whether they are right sliced this seaside town in two last week, just it has Baton Rouge, La.; Charlottesville, Va.; and Miami.

On Jan. 6, 2002, Christa Worthington, 46, a former fashion writer, was found dead, stabbed through the heart in a doorway of her bungalow. Alive and clinging to her was Ava, 21/2, her daughter, who had spent 36 hours alone with the body. The killer had stabbed Worthington so powerfully that the blade had left a mark in the floorboards beneath her. It appeared that Ava had tried to tend to her mother, dabbing her face with a washcloth. "Mommy fell down," she sobbingly told the person who found her.

Worthingtons had lived in Truro for generations. In fact, one of the first rescue workers at the scene was Christa's cousin. Christa had moved there from New York City to care for her sick mother. She had had an affair with a local fisherman, which produced Ava. After her mother died, Christa decided to stay. In her shingled house on a hill, surrounded by a tangle of spindly trees, she had started a new life, although not necessarily a frictionless one. What with family strains and frustrated romances, there were plenty of obvious suspects. Semen was found on Worthington's body, but it did not match any of them.