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Here's an interesting story.

BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) -- Cape Cod's district attorney, who made disparaging remarks about slain fashion writer Christa Worthington, might not prosecute her alleged killer himself.

O'Keefe has headed several high-profile prosecutions, but he outraged members of Worthington's family when he commented on her sex life in a book about the slaying.

In Maria Flook's 2003 book, ''Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod,'' O'Keefe is quoted as saying Worthington ''was an equal opportunity employer. She'd (expletive) the husbands of her female friends. The butcher or the banker.''

Nice, huh? He'd been working on the case a year and felt free to publicly cast aspersions on the victim's sex life. Because, of course, that was his theory of the case--sex. But guess what: turns out his theory was wrong:

BARNSTABLE, Mass., April 15 - After a three-year investigation, including a dragnet attempt to collect DNA from all the men in one Cape Cod town, law enforcement authorities today announced an arrest in the highly publicized killing of a fashion writer in the winter of 2002.

Christopher A. McCowen, 33, a laborer with a history of burglary convictions and domestic violence complaints, was charged with raping and murdering Christa Worthington, a 46-year-old fashion writer who was found stabbed to death in her bungalow in Truro, a small beach community near the tip of Cape Cod.

"The evidence would suggest that it was a person who knew Christa only in the sense that they were familiar with her comings and goings. They were not personal acquaintances, they were not friends in any way."

You may recall that when Ms. Worthington's body was discovered, her 2-year-old daughter was clinging to her body. And from the beginning prosecutors had one theory:

The murder, which also spawned a best-selling book, brought widespread media attention to Ms. Worthington's life, and led to criticism by some members of her family that investigators and the media were depicting her as leading a promiscuous life.

We'll say. He basically said, "Who the hell knows who killed her? How could we know when she (expletived) so many guys?" It's a wonder he bothered to look for the killer at all.

Here's the kicker:

Mr. McCowen was first considered a possible suspect in April 2002, three months after the murder, Mr. O'Keefe said, and at that time he was asked if he would be willing to give a DNA sample. He said he would, Mr. O'Keefe said.

But for reasons that Mr. O'Keefe would not make clear at today's news conference, it took authorities nearly two years to collect a DNA sample from Mr. McCowen even though they knew he had a lengthy criminal history in Florida involving, according to Florida records, burglary, trafficking in stolen property, grand theft and motor vehicle theft.

Then, from the time the DNA sample was taken in March 2004, it took more than a year for the state crime lab to analyze the DNA results.

Mr. O'Keefe said that was because of a lack of resources and a long backlog at the crime lab.

He said that it wasn't until last week, on April 7, that the crime lab analysis was completed and it turned out that Mr. McCowen's sample matched DNA found at the crime scene.

Mr. O'Keefe was asked at the news conference why investigators had not tried to obtain his DNA from other law enforcement agencies. His response was, "I'm not going to go there."

Get it? They had the evidence to convict the right guy all along. And the murder had nothing to do with Christa Worthington's sex life; she was raped and murdered in front of her 2 year-old daughter by a stranger with a long list of felonies who was known to investigators and who'd agreed to give a DNA sample.

Mr. O'Keefe didn't want to "go there" in explaining his department's inexplicable failures in this case. But from the beginning he had no trouble going lots of other places with it.