WORTHINGTON: "Step-sis" arrested 2/15/2002 on drug charges
JoAnn
http://ledger.southofboston.com/display/inn_news/news01.txt
This is getting more convoluted by the day, now Dad has to take a
polygraph among others and Arnold is contradicting himself.
Wednesday,
January 16, 2002
State Police investigators interviewed Porter about Christa
Worthington's death in Truro.
The Patriot Ledger(AP)
The troubled life of Elizabeth J. Porter, the Quincy woman tied to
wife-murderer Dirk Greineder and now to the murder of Christa
Worthington, was laid out in court and police records.
Porter was spotted on the stoop of a building in Roxbury with a
hypodermic needle in her hand. She was arrested on heroin charges and
subsequently made appearances yesterday in courtrooms in Roxbury and
Quincy.
Porter, 29, has been staying in a Quincy Center room paid for by the
72-year-old father of Christa Worthington, the fashion writer and
Hingham native found slain in her Truro home Jan. 6.
Porter has had frequent run-ins with the law for drug use, bad checks
and petty crimes. She was released after her court appearances yesterday
and left Quincy District Court in the company of two police detectives.
State Police investigating the Worthington murder had questioned Porter
and a male friend, identified only as Ed, last Thursday. She has not
been seen at the Quincy rooming house since then.
Porter was arrested in Boston yesterday morning with Edward L. Hall, 28,
of Gaylord Street, Dorchester. He told police he had given his
girlfriend drugs, said David Procopio, spokesman for acting Suffolk
County District Attorney Elizabeth Keeley.
Porter, also known by the aliases Katherine Porter and Kathleen H.
Porter, was arraigned in Roxbury District Court yesterday afternoon. She
was charged with possession of a hypodermic needle, being present where
heroin is kept and conspiracy to violate drug laws.
Hall was charged with possession of a class A substance, possession of a
hypodermic needle and trespassing.
Both pleaded innocent and were released without bail.
Porter was was taken to Quincy District Court in the afternoon for
violating probation following a 1999 conviction on drug charges. She was
charged with failing to check in with the court's probation department
or to register for drug testing after getting a six-month sentence for
possession of heroin and a hypodermic needle.
Judge Mark Coven set Jan. 29 as a date for a hearing on the charge, then
released Porter.
Her arrest in Roxbury was the latest in a string of run-ins with the law
that have resulted in a three-page record stretching back to when she
was 20 years old.
Porter has been identified as the prostitute who testified before a
grand jury about Dr. Dirk Greineder, who killed his wife in 1999. Porter
testified that the Wellesley allergist hired her twice to have sex.
Porter has been convicted of five heroin-related offenses in Dorchester
and
Quincy district courts since 1997. Since 1992, she has been convicted of
drunken driving, larceny of less than $250 and various minor motor
vehicle offenses in Brockton, Quincy and Dorchester district courts,
according to her adult criminal record.
In Braintree, police found her with a heroin and a hypodermic needle in
her motel room on Aug. 7, 1998. Police listed her as being homeless when
she was arrested. After pleading guilty the following year, she received
a six-month sentence, suspended for a year, by Judge Daniel O'Malley.
The warrant for her arrest was issued three months later. The probation
officer who sought the warrant described her as a "high-risk drug
offender." She was ultimately sentenced to serve 30 days in jail.
She has been living at the Ritz Manor, a rooming house at 3 Cottage
Ave., in a room leased under the name of Christopher Worthington, said
building manager, Rocco Vasil.
Christopher H. Worthington, the father of the Cape Cod murder victim,
lives in Weymouth and had told his daughter he was seeing Porter. The
Cape Cod Times newspaper reported today that he is among several people
asked to take lie detector tests in connection with the murder.
Worthington is a retired lawyer still working at the Dedham law firm of
Parasco, Worthington and Chase. Calls to the firm were not returned
yesterday.
He now lives in a modest home facing Whitmans Pond. He waved a reporter
away earlier this week and has declined other requests for comment.
Including yesterday's court appearance, Porter has 15 arraignments on
her record dating back to 1992. Despite her relationship with Greineder,
none of the charges are related to prostitution.
She was identified as working for Commonwealth Entertainment, an escort
service based in Quincy. Quincy police Sgt. Patrick Glynn said he would
look into any local connections to the escort service but said they are
generally run by pagers and cellular phones.
"We look for Quincy exchanges but that doesn't mean it's Quincy's
number," said Glynn.
A former boyfriend of Christa Worthington said the Truro writer spoke to
him about her father's relationship with Porter.
"She said he was happy," said Tim Arnold, 45, a children's book
illustrator.
Arnold found Worthington's body on the kitchen floor when he went to
return a flashlight to her. Her 2 1/2-year-old daughter Ava was found
crying beside her.
Worthington, 46, whose career had taken her to live in Paris and London
at one point, had returned to Massachusetts to care for her dying
mother.
Arnold said Christa Worthington had hired a private detective to probe
the sale of a Florida property after the death of her mother, Gloria
Worthington, in 1999.
According to Arnold, Worthington had been expecting to share in the
proceeds of the sale with her maternal aunt, Alice Truitt of Naples,
Fla., but never received any money. Arnold said the detective quickly
traced the money to an Individual Retirement Account of Truitt's.
Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
Arnold's statements contradict earlier published comments of his. He had
said that Worthington had hired an investigator to look into her
father's relationship with a younger woman because she was concerned
about his spending her inheritance.
He said yesterday, "I just misspoke about why she had hired the
investigator."