WORTHINGTON - Dad & Hooker at Hub ER

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Slain writer's dad seen with ex-hooker: Takes woman to Hub
ER for pneumonia
by Jose Martinez
Saturday, January 19, 2002

Christopher Worthington sat at the back of the waiting room
of Boston Medical Center's emergency room yesterday as
Elizabeth Porter, the former prostitute questioned in his
daughter's slaying, sought treatment for pneumonia.

Worthington, 72, and Porter, 29, brushed off reporters
tipped off to their trip to the public hospital.

``You're a bunch of sweethearts, aren't you,'' Worthington
said. ``She just went in for treatment. Leave her alone.''

``I have pneumonia and you want to photograph me. That's
really sick,'' Porter said, before pulling up her hood and
walking away into the South End.

More than a week after Porter and her live-in boyfriend were
questioned by state police about Worthington's 46-year-old
daughter Christa's murder on Cape Cod, his relationship with
the heroin addict remains a mystery.

Porter's family in Dorchester has said the two are friends.
Porter has identified herself to acquaintances as
Worthington's stepdaughter. Worthington's neighbors in
Weymouth said they were asked about a ``young girlfriend''
by state police.

Worthington has declined comment to reporters repeatedly
since his daughter's death.

Christa Worthington was found stabbed to death in her
secluded Truro home Jan. 6. The freelance fashion writer had
expressed concerns to friends about her father's younger
girlfriend.

Friends say Christa Worthington feared the younger woman was
after her father's money.

For more than a year, Worthington has footed the bill for
Porter's $550-a-month apartment at a rooming house in
Quincy. He recently renewed the one-year lease.

Authorities have named no suspects in the case but have
questioned two of Christa Worthington's ex-lovers - Tim
Arnold, who found her body, and Tony Jackett, the married
man now seeking custody of 2 -year-old Ava Worthington.

Porter, who had been shuttled from court to court this week
by state police, is free without bail and allegedly seeking
drug treatment. She was arrested again Tuesday on charges of
trespassing, possession of heroin and a needle. Her
boyfriend, Ed Hall, has been jailed on $500 cash bail since
their arrest Tuesday in Boston.

According to published reports, Porter and Hall both have
taken lie detector tests in the Cape Cod case but
authorities want Worthington to do the same.

Christa Worthington was the only child of Christopher and
Gloria Worthington, a quiet couple who moved into a
waterfront home near the Hingham Yacht Club in 1972. A few
months after Gloria Worthington died of cancer in 1999, her
husband sold their stately 1875 home with a wrap-around
porch overlooking the islands of Hingham Harbor for
$620,000, records show.

``She was very nice,'' Diane Clarke recalled. ``He seemed
very nice, too. We only ran into him a couple of times
because our dog had chased their cat. I know he was a
lawyer - he was in and out every day.''

Most neighbors in the exclusive seaside neighorhood declined
comment. Others recalled Gloria Worthington's love of
painting and the exhibitions of her pastel portraits, still
lifes and landscapes in oil at the Scituate Art Association.

``I have been following the case in the papers,'' Clarke
said. ``It is such a tragedy. I have no idea what his
involvement could be.''

Worthington now lives in a tiny Cape-style house on a lake
near a busy intersection in Weymouth that he purchased for
$162,500.

Worthington worked in the civil bureau of the Massachusetts
Attorney General's Office from 1970 to 1987. Thomas R.
Kiley, the longtime first assistant attorney general under
Francis X. Bellotti, recalled Worthington as ``a first-rate
civil attorney.'' ``He worked in the civil bureau, that's
not the sort of place you would write much about in the
newspapers, but it is the meat and potatoes of the AG's
office. He defended the commonwealth's purse,'' Kiley said.
``He is a very decent and honorable man.''

When Worthington left the public sector for private
practice, he and another former member of the civil bureau,
Frank Chase, opened shop in Dedham. Worthington retired from
Parasco, Worthington and Chase in 1993.