BARNSTABLE, Mass. — When Christa Worthington, a fashion writer from a wealthy Cape Cod family, was murdered in her seaside cottage four years ago, there was no shortage of suspects.

There was the married man who fathered Worthington's toddler and then fought with her over paternity and child support. There was the neighbor, an emotionally fragile children's book author, whom she had dated and cast off. There was her father, a 73-year-old former prosecutor, who earned her enmity by dating an ex-prostitute and drug addict half his age.

There were other men, too, and in her liaisons, investigators searched for clues.

"The more we look at her, the uglier she gets," the district attorney was quoted as saying in a book about the case published the year after the murder.

But in a trial set to begin Monday, prosecutors will assert that, in the end, Worthington's murder was unrelated to her character or choice of lovers or family disputes. Ultimately, prosecutors are expected to tell jurors, the only role Worthington played in her own death was paying a disposal company to pick up her trash each week.

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The man who collected the garbage bags from Worthington's driveway, Christopher McCowen, 34, is accused of murder, aggravated rape and armed burglary. If convicted by a jury in Barnstable Superior Court, he faces a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Authorities say McCowen, a convicted felon with a long history of violent and threatening behavior toward women, did not know about Worthington's reputation or the glamorous career that had taken her to Paris, London and New York. According to prosecutors, the only thing he knew when he allegedly broke down her front door, forced himself on her and plunged a kitchen knife in her chest was her street address.

"They were not personal acquaintances. They were not friends in any way," Michael O'Keefe, the Cape and Islands District Attorney, said after McCowen's arrest.

"It was a person who knew Christa only in the sense that [he was] familiar with her comings and goings," the prosecutor said.

On the cape, with its insularity and low crime rate, the Worthington murder has been the subject of intense interest. The idyllic locale, mystery novel-esque circumstances and long and controversial investigation also made it a national story, complete with a bestselling book and two movie deals.

McCowen, a muscular former high school football star, has pleaded not guilty. His defense lawyer has said that incriminating statements he made to authorities were coerced, and he has hinted that DNA linking McCowen to the scene may be proof only of consensual sexual relations with the victim.

"Mr. McCowen was an easy target and a scapegoat for an investigation that has been flawed since the discovery of Christa Worthington's body," the lawyer, Robert George, told Court TV.

McCowen was on investigators' radar within a few months of the murder because of his criminal record and contact, however minimal, with the victim, but he remained on the periphery for three years because detectives were focused on suspects with a stronger connection to Worthington.

'The butcher or the banker'

A neighbor trying to return a flashlight found Worthington lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen hall of West Wind, her cottage in the town of Truro, on Jan. 6, 2002. Her 2 1/2 year-old daughter, Ava, was sitting near her mother's body.

"Mommy fell down," the toddler said.

Christa Worthington's body was found at 50 Depot Road.

Worthington was naked below the waist and there were cuts and bruises on her arms, face, legs and chest. A pathologist would later determine she had died from a single stab wound that had pierced her left lung. She had been dead for a day or two.

There were signs of a struggle inside and outside the house. The front door appeared to have been kicked in. Some of Worthington's belongings, including her eyeglasses and a barrette, were scattered across her driveway. There were blades of grass in Worthington's brown hair. Her wallet was gone, as was her cordless phone. Her cellphone was in the house, and someone had dialed the number "9" — as if starting to call for help.

Investigators did not have to look far for people to interview about Worthington. Her cousin Jan was among the rescue workers on the scene, and the neighbor who had found her, Tim Arnold, was a former boyfriend.

They sketched out Worthington's story. Her family had deep roots on the cape, but she had left, first for college and then for a career writing about fashion for women's magazines, including Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar. She was the Paris bureau chief of Women's Wear Daily. She had returned to the cape in 1998 to help care for her dying mother and to enjoy a slower pace of life.

Worthington, shown here a year before her murder with her daughter, was a high-profile fashion writer.

After her mother died, she became pregnant by Tony Jackett, the local shellfish constable and a married father of six. She decided to raise her daughter by herself, but when Ava was a year old, asked Jackett to acknowledge the child and contribute financially. After some arguments, Jackett grudgingly told his wife about his affair and his daughter. They remained married, and the Jacketts saw Ava from time to time.

Investigators also learned that Worthington had ended her relationship with Arnold and that she reportedly had changed her will to exclude him about two months before the murder. Other friends and acquaintances told detectives about her frustration with her father, Christopher, a former state attorney general, and his new girlfriend, a 29-year-old heroin addict who had worked as a call girl. Worthington felt he was squandering the family fortune.

Forensic tests found semen on Worthington's chest and genitals, and DNA analysis isolated an individual genetic profile. Investigators initially focused on Jackett, Arnold and other men that Worthington had dated, but none of their DNA matched.

In an interview with Maria Flook for her 2003 book "Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod," the district attorney, O'Keefe, suggested that Worthington's promiscuity played a role in the investigation, which by then had stalled.

He called her "an equal opportunity employer; she'd [expletive] the husbands of female friends. The butcher or the banker."