Part two of the investigation into the murder of 37-year-old Peggy Hettrick. Her body was discovered in a field near the home of Tim Masters, and over a decade later, Masters was sentenced to life in prison for Peggy's murder. But Masters always maintained his innocence. Because of advances in forensic science, his new lawyers requested to test the DNA found on Peggy's clothing, revealing critical new evidence. “48 Hours" correspondent Susan Spencer reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 12/24/2011. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the background of the Peggy Hettrick case?
This special two-part edition of 48 Hours continues. Drawn to murder.
February 11, 1987. I was walking through a field on the way to catch a school bus. I saw a body. I didn't believe it was real. I thought it was a mannequin and that someone was playing some kind of sick joke on me.
Peggy Hetrick, a woman who lived in Fort Collins, was found brutally murdered in a field. When the Fort Collins police began to investigate the case, they looked at a number of suspects. One of those suspects was a 15-year-old, Tim Masters, who lived next to the field. He had gone up to the body that morning, hadn't reported it.
Chapter 2: Why was Tim Masters considered a suspect?
Tim was very introverted and very shy and very quiet. Didn't have a lot of friends.
They went to his house, and they found very graphic drawings and writings, as well as a large knife collection.
Would we bring you in here without some kind of proof?
Right away, they started saying, I know you did this. She's dead. We thought the right thing to do was to cooperate with the police.
Tim was branded the lead suspect in a horrific sexual mutilation and murder at age 15. Tim has not had a life since age 15.
Through the years, they focused on Tim Masters.
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Chapter 3: How was Tim Masters convicted without physical evidence?
I think that the lead detective, Detective Broderick in this case, was so obsessed and so convinced of Tim Masters' guilt, he was willing to do anything to get a conviction of Tim Masters in this case.
The real hope was that there'd be some physical evidence. There'd be a fingerprint. There'd be something that we'd come up with that would match up with him. And that just didn't happen.
He works for 10, 11 years.
There were obviously other avenues that should have been explored that were not.
They got an arrest warrant for Mr. Masters and charged him with first degree murder of Peggy Hetrick.
I really did not think Tim Masters could pull this off and leave not a single shred of physical evidence.
Much of the prosecution's case is expected to come from a psychologist.
The doodles are the evidence. I never thought there was a chance in the world that they would convict me without evidence. But they did. It was just totally surreal. How could this happen? How could I end up in here for something I didn't even do?
After being pursued for years, Tim Masters now was in prison for life without parole.
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Chapter 4: Who is Maria Liu and how did she get involved?
Then 36-year-old court-appointed attorney Maria Liu says that when the gigantic master's file landed on her desk in 2003, she had no idea what to think.
So you sort of have to unravel the mystery, basically, as to whether or not this person deserves a new trial.
she hunkered down and started reading. And I didn't think he was innocent right off the bat. Then she watched those police interrogation tapes.
You shot the hell out of everybody. I believe it was five different police officers tag-teaming him, doing everything, good cop, bad cop, military cop, nice cop.
You did it?
What the hell did you do?
I don't know what I did. I didn't do anything.
That's when I was like, oh my God, he is innocent. And then when I met Tim in the prison, he was more focused on us proving his innocence than he was on getting out, which to me says a lot.
You're pretty much Tim Master's only hope at that point.
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Chapter 5: What role did Dr. Richard Hammond play in the case?
When you're looking into Dr. Hammond, you're looking into a sex offense, right? Yes, sir. Okay.
Dr. Hammond, a neighbor of Tim's, was arrested some years after the Hetrick murder for secretly videotaping women in his bathroom.
This guy set up a studio to get close-up of vaginas and nipples. and you have a body in the field missing those parts.
A great alternate suspect, the defense says, but his name was never mentioned in the original trial.
Gotta give me the biggest sexual pervert in the history of South Fort Collins.
He is a superb suspect. Geez, that's funny. One guy was a doodler and the other guy's a sex offender. Did anybody say that?
And David Wymore argues that Dr. Hammond's very existence so close to the crime scene defines reasonable doubt.
They have the same alibi. Tim Masters' dad says that he's home all night in his trailer. Dr. Hammond's wife says he's home all night in the house. The difference is that Tim Masters doesn't have 300 videotapes of people's vaginas and nipples at his house, and he's also not an eye surgeon. The court has to impress on the Fort Collins police.
It's over. In court, Wymore presents a long list of other crucial evidence he says was withheld from the defense, and as it turns out, from prosecutors as well. It includes Broderick's notes on conversations with a former FBI profiler.
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Chapter 6: How did new evidence and theories challenge the conviction?
And that big question of surgical skill came up with yet another expert police consulted.
Dr. Choi basically said it would be a hard cut for him to make, and he was a plastic surgeon.
But the views of Dr. Richard Choi never surfaced in court either. Not, says former cop David Michelson, that it takes all these experts to see the obvious.
It wasn't done by a boy with a D-cell flashlight in his mouth and a pocket knife. Crawl out of his window, stab a lady, circumcise her. Didn't happen. Impossible.
The defense says police never revealed to either side exactly how far they went to get Masters to incriminate himself.
Planting newspapers suggesting that they were close to finding the killer. They were actually planting his mom's obituary on his friend's truck.
They schemed and planned this elaborate psychological experiment on him, and he passed it.
This is outrageous. I strongly believe that this police department framed Tim Masters.
but this was equal opportunity withholding. Material wasn't turned over to the defense, but not to prosecutors either. Broderick concedes it may not look very good. So you're just sitting there listening to them say, there's this, this, this, and this, and this looks like a frame job.
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Chapter 7: How does DNA evidence factor into reopening the case?
There's nothing accurate about his drawing. I think the footprints alone deserve to give him a new trial. I thought Dr. Hammond alone deserved to give him a new trial. The psychological experiment alone deserved to give him a new trial, the nondisclosure of all these things. But I never count my chickens before they hatch. You know, I got to hear it from the courts. They gave him.
Because as damning as that list sounds, these hearings are far from over. The prosecution has yet to present its answers to the defense's many charges. This is, at the end of the day, a search for the truth. The bar for granting a new trial is very high. It's so hard to undo a conviction.
I just want them to confess.
Wymore and Lew would love some new evidence to lower that bar a bit, and modern science could provide it.
The two individuals that carried her would have transferred their DNA onto her clothing as they carried her into the field.
But can investigators retrieve DNA after all this time?
We're one month shy of 20 years, so are we still going to find the DNA? We don't know, but we're going to try.
With Tim Master's future hanging in the balance, the defense team is about to go halfway around the world and risk everything to find out.
This was a very emotional case, I think, on so many levels.
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