BARNSTABLE, Mass. — A lawyer for a trash collector accused in the fatal stabbing of a fashion writer on Cape Cod suggested to jurors Wednesday that the defendant's DNA was at the crime scene because he had consensual sex with the victim before her murder by an unknown killer.

In his opening statement at the trial of Christopher McCowen, the defense attorney accused detectives investigating Christa Worthington's murder of ignoring the possibility of a relationship between his client and the victim because of preconceived notions about race and class.

"As soon as they see the black garbage man, it's rape, and not just rape, but aggravated rape because this women would never have had sex with this man unless it's rape," lawyer Robert George said. (VIDEO)

He told the jury that investigators armed with a DNA report matching McCowen to DNA on the victim's body sought an arrest warrant "based on a false assumption that a Vassar-educated, 46-year-old world-traveling, wealthy heiress could not possibly have had consensual sex with a black, uneducated, troubled garbage man."

The allegations came just before jurors heard dramatic testimony from the first witness, the victim's former boyfriend and a longtime suspect in her murder. He recounted finding Worthington dead and her toddler daughter trying to nurse from the lifeless, bloody body.

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"I looked in and I saw her lying there and my first thought was that was a really strange place to nurse," the witness, Tim Arnold, told a hushed courtroom.

Among those present for his turn on the stand were Worthington's father, Christopher, and a half dozen other relatives and McCowen's father.

The 33-year-old is facing a mandatory sentence of life without parole if convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated rape and armed burglary in the Jan. 5, 2002, death of Worthington, the former Paris bureau chief of Women's Wear Daily. There were no arrests made in the murder for three years while detectives focused on Arnold and other lovers of Worthington.

As the defendant, a hulking man who seemed barely able to fit into a dark gray suit, sat staring down at the defense table, his lawyer said the other suspects, whom he described as "white guys with master's degrees," got lawyers, but his client had an IQ of 76 and "wasn't smart enough" to get his own attorney.

Referring to the number of men Worthington bedded, George said, "I am not going to bash the victim. I won't do it, but her background and what was going on in her life is something you can take into consideration."

In his comments to jurors Wednesday, the prosecutor noted that there was no evidence that Worthington and McCowen had any relationship beyond an occasional wave when he collected trash bags from her driveway.

Assistant District Attorney Robert Welsh III told the panel that in three separate interviews over a three-year period, McCowen told investigators he did not know Worthington personally and had never been in her house.

"He tells police he had no physical interaction with Christa Worthington whatsoever. He did not know her. He did not speak to her," Welsh said.

He cautioned the jury, which includes 10 whites and two blacks, against viewing the evidence through the prism of race.

"This case has to do with a horrendous crime, an individual matching the DNA," Welch said. "The color of his skin has nothing to do with it."

The prosecutor also outlined incriminating statements McCowen made to police in his final interview. Over the course of a seven-hour interview, he went from saying he did not know Worthington to telling detectives he had helped a friend assault her and then watched as the friend plunged a knife from her butcher block into her chest.

"We took the boots to her," the prosecutor quoted McCowen as saying. Despite his statements, police concluded he acted alone and the prosecutor said the man whom McCowen identified as an accomplice would testify along with the man's alibi witness. (VIDEO)

The defense has hired an expert in false confessions to cast doubt on the veracity of McCowen's statement, and his lawyer told jurors the case was comparable to the Central Park jogger case in which teenagers confessed to police only to be exonerated after years in jail.

A journal after the murder

Tim Arnold, former boyfriend of victim Christa Worthington, took the stand on the first day of testimony Wednesday.

Jurors appeared riveted by the testimony of Arnold, a struggling children's book author who lived with Worthington and her daughter for about six months a year before the murder. Arnold, 48, a tall man with graying hair drawn into a ponytail, suffers from a neurological condition, which gives him double vision and a lack of sensation on one side of his body. He squinted his left eye as he recounted his gruesome discovery of Worthington's body on the floor of her home.

"There was blood around her head, and as I reached my arms out to Ava she came readily," he said. "I couldn't really make sense of what I was seeing."

He said he touched Worthington's cheek and it was cold. He scooped up Ava and ran to his father's house, which was next door, to call for help.

Arnold said he was questioned by police on three occasions, including one interview in which he said troopers became "confrontational." His DNA did not match the profile found on Worthington's body.

"Did you kill Christa Worthington, sir?" the prosecutor asked him.

"No," he replied.

On cross-examination, McCowen's attorney pressed him about his relationship with Worthington. He acknowledged that they fought often and that he told troopers he sometimes felt she was using him as a free babysitting service for her daughter.

He admitted he had written an "angry" letter to Worthington after they broke up, but noted that he never sent it. George read entries from a journal he kept after the murder in which he discussed feeling Worthington's spirit "holding" him.

"I wish you had held me more in life," he wrote in one entry addressed to her.

The journals were among the evidence police assembled while investigating Arnold. He said he hired an attorney because he realized he was becoming a suspect.

"The police were exhibiting more than a passing interest in me," he said.

"They thought you killed Christa," George said.

"Yes, it turns out that is what they thought," Arnold replied.

His testimony is to continue Thursday morning.