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Now, a special two-part edition of 48 hours. I think he'd seen her quite a bit before
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this night. It had been building up for a long time. It was late at night, coming home,
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probably 1:00 in the morning or later. She was walking down the curb line. She had no clue that the attack was coming.
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He circled around, came up behind her, stabbed her. >> One deep stab by a long knife into her
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back which killed her very quickly. >> You could see a bloody drag trail in the furrows.
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The body had been displayed. Then there was sexual mutilation. >> Fort Collins in 1987. It very much had a
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small town feeling. So when Peggy Hedrick was killed, it was shocking to this community.
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She was a highly intelligent person, very artistic. Peggy was my older sister. She traveled all over the world.
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Just an amazing person. Really an amazing person. A bicyclist spotted the body early this
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morning in a field on the south side of Fort Collins. >> I was called on the case within the
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first hour that it occurred. >> I was the one who tied to Masters to this case. >> This is just a 15-year-old kid. He lives
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right next to the crime scene. He discovered the body and never reported it. The investigation basically centered
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around Tim Masters. >> It's important you tell the truth. I have told the truth. I didn't do
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nothing. >> Would we bring you in here without some kind of proof? >> This was a kid when we searched his
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residence that had all kinds of graphic drawings, mutilation, dismemberment. >> I remember being overwhelmed with a
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sense of, "Oh my god, this is the guy that killed Peggy Hetrick." This was more than just a passing fancy of a
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teenage boy. This is a window into his mind. >> There was not enough evidence to make an
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arrest. >> Through the years, they focused on Tim Masters. >> The Hedrickk homicide was opened and
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closed, went cold. It was Lieutenant Brick that reopened the case. >> He was a suspect in my mind from the
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very first day and nothing ever changed. This was a single-minded investigation.
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There was one man after one suspect. >> Year after year, it was like a personal vendetta for him to come after me.
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>> He was told it wouldn't end, that we'd continue working this case. >> I didn't think it was possible to be
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convicted for something I didn't do when there's not even any physical evidence.
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>> There was evidence at the crime scene that eliminated Tim Masters, and it was
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not told to the jury. Every single piece of exculpatory evidence is withheld. >> I've been locked up for 10 years.
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>> I'm a police officer. I'm a homicide investigator. And all of a sudden, I went, the system failed.
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>> Drawn to murder. Tonight's 48 hours mystery. Heat. Heat. 9 years, 4 months, 21 days so far.
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Tim Masters went to prison in 1999. And for much of that time, lived in this cramped, dreary cell,
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sentenced to life for a grizzly murder he swears he did not commit. >> I'd be laying in my bunkets and I it
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still astounded me that I was there. I couldn't believe it. >> It just didn't seem real.
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>> No. >> Nor does any of this seem real. The Fort Collins police, you don't have
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a secret file. It's over. Well, that's their assertion. They're in that position
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>> because after years of hearings and petitions and unsuccessful appeals, >> it is clearly a concerted effort to hide
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evidence. >> It's mindboggling. >> A judge at last is about to make a ruling that could set Masters free.
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>> People of the state of Colorado versus Timothy Masters. >> To me, it's not over yet. But I'm still
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dressed in orange. I'm still in a in a jail. It'll be over when I walk out the door.
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>> If he does, he'll have a small army of unlikely supporters to thank. >> He's been innocent and then they put an
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innocent man in jail. >> Not just his gigantic extended family. >> I couldn't find that piece of evidence
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that told me how this kid got convicted, >> but also lawyers. >> I'm convinced in my mind Tim Masters
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didn't do this. Even former cops, all of them claiming they've been sure for years now. Tim Masters didn't do it.
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>> Nine and a half years he's spent in prison. He's been under this cloud of suspicion for 20 years.
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>> Masters, 37, has walked in the shadow of this murder since he was 15 years old.
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On the morning of February 11th of 1987, the half naked body of a 37year-old woman named Peggy Hetrich was found in a
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field in Fort Collins, Colorado, a stones throw from Tim Masters house. >> There were a lot of people who really
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felt strongly that Tim Masters was a very viable suspect. >> And among them back in 1987 was veteran
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cop Linda Wheeler. I think it was like 7:13 in the morning. The body had just been discovered.
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>> The passerby who spotted it first mistook it for a mannequin. >> The body was very clean to look at it. I
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mean, there was no blood on the body. >> There was a deep stab wound to Peggy Hedrickk's upper back.
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>> You could see a a bloody drag trail in the furrows. It was pretty apparent that
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the victim was dragged out to the to the final resting point. And >> when officer Jim Brick arrived at the
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scene, he was struck by footprints along that trail leading back to a pool of blood by the
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curb and he was struck by the body itself. >> The positioning of the body is something
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to pay attention to. Her pants were pulled down to her knees, her shirt pushed up to her chin. Part of
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one of her breasts had been removed. >> It was in fact a sexual homicide. >> The prospect of a mad man sexually
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mutilating his victims created near panic and Jim Brick and the Fort Collins police went into overdrive.
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Among the early persons of interest, Peggy Hetrick's one-time boyfriend, Matt Zner.
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>> I think she was seeing somebody else. She had mentioned it. >> Zner was questioned for hours. Even took
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a polygraph. >> Are you the one who's dead piggy head? >> Then was released. Police, meanwhile, were canvasing every
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house near the crime scene, talking with businessmen, housewives, even with a prominent eye surgeon. Dr. Richard
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Hammond. Years later, Dr. Hammond would figure in this case, but back then, he was just
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another neighbor who'd seen nothing suspicious. But Linda Wheeler was sure someone must
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have seen something. And the first house I went to on the corner was Clyde Masters.
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>> Home to Clyde and his 15-year-old son Tim, who had few friends, but no history
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of trouble. He >> was a very quiet kid, a very introverted kid. >> Tim's mother had died four years earlier
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when he was only 11 years old. Usually Tim cuts straight through the field to catch the school bus, but his
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father told police that on that morning he'd seen his son hesitate >> and had veered to the left as he was
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walking through the field and had stopped for a few moments. It it became very obvious to me that his son must
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have seen the body. >> Tim's footprints were in the field, but he hadn't reported a thing.
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>> We need to focus on him. A few hours later, police appeared at Tim's high school and yanked him out of class for
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questioning. As Brick recalled in this interview in 2000, >> his explanation for not reporting it was
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that he thought it was just a mannequin and somebody was playing a trick. >> I didn't believe it was real. It was a
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15-year-old kid. But all morning long as I'm at school, I was thinking about it.
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Well, what if it was a really body? The passer by who called in the crime also first thought he'd seen a mannequin.
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But police weren't buying that story from Tim. Brick searched the master's trailer and
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hit pay dirt. >> And there on his dresser he's got um seven knives, six of them survival
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knives, all sequentially displayed. >> And one of them Brick assumed could be the murder weapon.
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This is similar size knife as the knife that killed Peggy Hetrickch. >> Tim Clyde, I wonder if either one of you
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would have any problems if I talked with Tim alone. >> No, I don't. >> With Tim's father's permission, Roderick
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and a team of cops interrogated the 15year-old for more than 10 hours without a lawyer.
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>> Can you tell me what happened? I don't know what happened. >> And I think you know some more than what
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you're telling right now. >> You think I did it? >> Well, everything's pretty much looking
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that way, Kim. >> Right away, uh, they started saying, "I know you did this and just fess up to it,
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asking the same questions over and over." >> You sure you've never seen this lady
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before? You feel sorry for that girl? >> Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Is your girl alive? >> I don't know. Was she walking by? Was
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she driving by? What happened? >> I don't know. >> She's dead. That chick died. Thank God we got you
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here. >> You know, I I have a hard time believing that you didn't know it was the body.
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>> Did you fall? Did she trip into the night? What happened to her? I don't know that.
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>> Yeah. Do I? >> Yeah, you do. >> I don't know. >> Yeah, you do. >> It was you. I didn't do nothing. I
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didn't do it. I didn't do it. I told him you did it. >> They gave him a lie detector test
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>> yesterday. Did you murder that girl? >> No. Are you the one who stabbed that girl?
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>> No. >> The official report of the test results is lost today, but Brick says Tim
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failed. He definitely needed to be looked at. Yes, definitely he did. And it was very
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easy for everybody kind of a pack mentality >> to start focusing on him. >> And leading the pack was Jim Brderick.
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>> The victim's going to pass right there where he lives. Perfect opportunity under the cover of darkness to go out
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there and commit the crime. And Brderick was about to find evidence that for him erased all doubt. Tim
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Masters killed Peggy Hedrik. Every single notebook had some sort of horrific drawing in it.
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You think that I did it? >> Well, everything's pretty much looking that way, too.
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>> She's dead. >> Fort Collins police began their intense interrogation of Tim Masters the very
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day Peggy Hetrick's body was found. >> You guys think that I did it? >> It's It's past that, guy. It's past
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that. We know that you did it. >> And that evening, another officer miles away in Florida quietly made his way to
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the Hetrich family home. >> The gentleman looked real somber. I mean, he big guy. He had to been all of
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64 or 6'2. I remember him. Huge, towering. >> There to break the terrible news to her
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father and brother, Tom. and he looked down and he he uh took a moment and he looked up and he said uh um your uh your
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daughter is expired. >> At those words, he says time stopped. >> You think no, we can we can maneuver
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this back and have him say something else. >> Mhm. because you think in that moment of
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time, that second of time, you have the power to maybe change something and that
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this is not this can't be happening to you. >> The gruesome details were doubly hard to
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grasp, he says, because his older sister had been such a force of nature. >> Yep. That was her prom night.
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>> And this is in Libya. >> That's in Libya. Yes. >> The Hetrics had lived all over the
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world, moving as Mr. Patrick's job in the oil business required. >> How many different countries did you
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live in? >> Oh my goodness. Uh uh Libya, Malta for a short time in Spain, Hawaii, just
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everywhere. >> Peggy was red-haired, independent, and he says, delightfully eccentric. Out
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west, she developed a keen interest in Native American culture, >> especially the Hopy Indians, and she
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really lived and breathed it. What she was not interested in, he says, was getting married. Although she'd had
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boyfriends, among them her ex, Matt Zner. >> I remember asking the policeman, "Are do
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they have the boyfriend?" >> Zolder's on again, offagain relationship with Peggy had been stormy at times.
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>> You think immediately that it may be somebody close. That's the first thing that my dad and I both thought. We
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suspected uh the boyfriend right off the bat. >> Your whole evening made you quick.
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>> Police did question Zoler. His date confirmed his story that he'd been with her until around 300 a.m. However, he
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was among the last people to see Peggy alive. He'd run into her in a bar parking lot at around 12:30. He said the
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first time he'd seen her since they'd broken up a week before. And she'd not been happy to see him on a date. And
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then I offered to give her a ride home. I know she was on foot. She says, "No, I'm just going to wash it."
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>> Police believe it was on that walk in the early morning hours that Peggy Hetrick's murderer struck.
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>> I didn't do it. >> And despite hours of denials from Tim Masters, >> it's important you tell the truth. I
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have told the truth. Detective Brderick was growing more certain Masters did it.
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>> Dragged her into the adjacent field and then there was sexual mutilation to her
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body. Police were shocked to learn at autopsy that that mutilation also included what
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amounted to a female circumcision. All part of Master's deliberate plan, Brderick thought. that you can actually
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see the body laying out there in the field by viewing through his window. And I think he positioned the body so you
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could then see it from his bedroom window. >> The knives police found lay on the
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dresser. One had a scalpel inside the handle and there was another scalpel on a table nearby, but there was no trace
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of Peggy's blood on any of them. Nor did they find her blood on any of Tim's clothes or shoes. They even searched the
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drains. Nothing. >> There's there's a misconception by a lot of people that because there's a lot of
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blood at a scene, it means a suspect's going to get a lot of blood on them. And that just isn't in the case.
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>> By contrast, there was no lack of blood in the ghoulish drawings in Master's high school notebooks found in his room,
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backpack, and school locker. had all kinds of graphic drawings and narratives about murders, violence against women.
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And we find a drawing where a body is being dragged from under the arms with blood dripping from the back.
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>> Much as Peggy had been dragged, he thought, but as incriminating as the drawing seemed, the case was completely
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circumstantial. Weeks, then months passed with no arrest. >> The evidence is consisted essentially of
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the drawings and the fact that he hadn't reported the body. >> Exactly. >> Anything else?
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>> No. >> Any hairs, fibers, fingerprints, blood, nothing? >> There was there was never anything that
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ever tied him to it. >> Nothing at all. Not a smidgen of of forensic evidence that tied him to it.
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>> No, there was nothing. >> Police finally jinned up a plan to get the evidence they lacked. Peggy Hetrick
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had been murdered almost exactly four years after Tim's mother died. The theory was that Tim had killed out of
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rage at losing his mother. And so the cops thought when that day rolls around again, maybe he can be goated into doing
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something incriminating. >> Expectations were that Timothy Masters would go berserk, go crazy, if you will.
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Then patrolman Troy Krenn was among the dozen or so officers on the 92 member force assigned to watch Tim Masters. He
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was not pleased. It >> was a 24/7 operation that lasted for about a week. We're out chasing these
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goofball theories that a 15-year-old kid's going to go berserk and start killing people.
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They first scouted out vantage points at neighboring houses, including that of the eye surgeon whose home overlooked
00:20:01
the crime scene. >> It's pathetic. It's embarrassing. >> Krenn watched Tim's house from a
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construction trailer. >> Most of the time he wasn't there. He would get up and go to school, come
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home, go to bed. >> Others staked out Peggy Hetrick's grave. I remember at this briefing, one of the
00:20:16
things that was talked about was that he might go down to the grave and revisit Peggy Hedrickk's grave and maybe even
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lay on the grave. What? Lay on the grave? You know what kind of silliness is that?
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>> But the plan went still further. At one point, police duped a newspaper reporter
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into writing a phony story, saying an arrest was imminent. Looking back, you almost have to be
00:20:42
ashamed to to admit that you participated. >> They even left a copy of Tim's mother's
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obituary on the windshield of a friend's truck. >> That's torture. >> Tim's former attorney, Eric Fiser.
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>> They're trying to get this poor kid to relive his mother's death. They're trying to make him snap.
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It's a psychological experiment to try to make him snap. And what did this elaborate psychological experiment
00:21:11
produce? Zero. >> He didn't do anything. >> I still remember to this day them planting uh the newspaper articles on my
00:21:18
friend's truck and in my driveway, but I didn't know they were watching me when they did it.
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>> At that point, it wouldn't have mattered. He says the investigation already had wrecked his life.
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>> So now everyone in the school thinks I'm a murderer. I only had one friend that
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stuck with me the whole time. I mean, I had lots of people come up to me and say, "I don't think you did it." but
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they still weren't going to go to the prom with me. >> He remembers thinking that someday,
00:21:42
surely, everyone would understand that this had been a terrible mistake. But he'd not counted on one very determined
00:21:50
cop. Four years after the Hetric murder, Tim Masters thought he had finally rescued
00:22:10
his reputation. When I joined the Navy, I figured it was all behind me. I was going on with my career. I thought
00:22:24
thought my life was going well. I just got a promotion. I thought it was over. >> But back in Fort Collins, the case had
00:22:33
gone cold. It sat there until 1991. >> Linda Wheeler learned she'd been picked to reopen the case and her marching
00:22:41
orders were clear. >> See if you can't put enough of the puzzle together to arrest him masters.
00:22:49
>> She worked for a year with masters in her sights before she stumbled on that apparent missing piece of the puzzle.
00:22:57
Something Tim had mentioned to a friend. Tim Astress had told him that he knew that Peggy Hedrickk's nipple had been
00:23:07
either cut off or bitten off. >> She was sure it was a detail police never had made public.
00:23:14
>> And I went, "Oh, right. We got him." >> In July of 1992, armed with an arrest
00:23:20
warrant, Jim Brick and Linda Wheeler hopped a flight to Philadelphia, where Tim ship was in port.
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They grilled him again for a day and a half. >> So when they were interrogating me, I I
00:23:34
told them how I knew, what I knew, and they called. >> He told them that their big secret was
00:23:38
in fact common knowledge at the high school because, incredibly, police had enlisted the help of students, explorer
00:23:45
scouts, to search the field for body parts. >> And one of them scouts just happened to
00:23:50
sit at my table in our class. And one day, she says they had been looking for Peggy Hedrickk's nipples.
00:23:57
To the detective's complete shock, the former scout confirmed Tim's story. >> What was thought to be a nice
00:24:04
incriminating piece of information really was pretty diluted. >> My key piece of the puzzle had got blown
00:24:10
out of the water. >> For Linda Wheeler, that was it. >> I started having my doubts.
00:24:15
>> The cop who'd been first to tie Tim Masters to the crime now was the first to think she'd been
00:24:23
wrong. I was very verbal about I'm not sure we're on the right track. I am not comfortable with Tim Masters as a
00:24:31
suspect anymore. >> Okay. When you said that, what did your superior say? >> I wasn't very popular with that with
00:24:39
that opinion. >> Wheeler wanted to reinvestigate, start from square one, enlist the help of the
00:24:46
FBI. >> I was told I could not take it to the FBI. I was not able to look at alter alternate suspects. By the
00:24:55
end of 93, I was back on patrol. >> She says she was fed up and ostracized. She quit the Fort Collins police in
00:25:04
1995. Jim Brderick, meanwhile, had been freshly promoted to supervisor, and he soon reopened the case, focusing on his
00:25:15
favorite suspect. It had always been an interest of mine anyway and now is in a position to to actually do something
00:25:21
about it. >> He had no new evidence, but in 1997 he found an ally, someone who put a new spin on the best
00:25:32
evidence he did have. Tim's eerie drawings and what they meant. >> He was preoccupied with violence, with
00:25:39
sexually sadistic images, with images of domination and degradation of women. Dr. Reed Malloy is an internationally
00:25:48
known expert on sexual homicide interviewed here in 2000. >> In my uh 18 years of doing this kind of
00:25:56
work, I have never seen uh such voluminous productions by a suspect. >> A 15-year-old's twisted musings, bizarre
00:26:09
artwork and stories about violence, torture, and death. disturbing. Sure. Tim said for a nerdy
00:26:18
kid trying to get attention, that was the point. >> My peers seemed to approve of them. They
00:26:25
they like those drawings. They would offer suggestions. So that encouraged me to draw even more
00:26:30
>> and we we would draw horrible, gruesome scenes and share with the guy and they
00:26:34
go, "Oh, that's cool." And pass it back. >> That's all this was. >> Yeah. >> But Dr. Reed Malloy saw much more. I
00:26:41
look for specificity of links between uh Tim Masters and the facts of the homicide itself.
00:26:49
>> He says he found hundreds of links, but two drawings stood out. One shows how he believes Tim Masters
00:26:58
moved Peggy's body. >> In this particular drawing, we have what appears to be a person uh dragging
00:27:04
another person under their arms from behind. And we also have what appears to be blood uh dripping down from the
00:27:11
person. >> And the other graphically depicts what Dr. Mallaloy thinks Tim did to her.
00:27:18
>> Immediately I thought that it was an image of a vagina being cut. The knife appears to be like the one
00:27:27
that was used in the crime. >> Malloy concluded that this was a textbook sexual homicide.
00:27:34
An outgrowth of Tim's fury at being abandoned at 11 when his mother died. >> Timothy Masters is symbolically killing
00:27:41
his mother. >> I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Tim Masters was the killer.
00:27:56
>> Jim Brick felt that finally he had his man. >> Well, I was I actually felt really good.
00:28:03
He headed for California where Tim was working, honorably discharged from the Navy and now 27 years old.
00:28:11
>> And I get a a pounding on my door early in the morning on a Monday morning. A
00:28:15
guy shows up there at the door with a suit and tie on and he says, "Tim Masters, you're under the arrest for the
00:28:20
murder of Peggy Hetrick. This is unreal. Unbelievable." >> When Brick searched the house, he found
00:28:26
guns, knives, and drawings similar to what he'd found in 1987. A few months later, police brought Tim
00:28:36
back to Colorado. >> To me, I think it all came together really nice. >> He went on trial for the murder of Peggy
00:28:42
Hetrickch in March 1999. >> We had all sorts of theories at the beginning. Uh, >> theories, but no physical evidence.
00:28:52
Prosecutors Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair admitted soon after the trial they thought their case was pretty thin.
00:29:00
Because there were times when Terry and I were looking at each other like, "What are we doing? There's no way we're
00:29:05
going to prove this crime. We got nothing." And that's when Broadick would say, "Wait a minute. Come on, guys. This
00:29:10
is what we needed to do, and it was the right thing." And there was never any doubt in his mind.
00:29:15
>> Tim's changed appearance helped their cause. >> The jurors didn't see this skinny little
00:29:20
15-year-old kid. >> He'd grown into an imposing figure, looking fully capable of the crime. Have
00:29:29
you ever had any doubt that Tim Masters was innocent? >> No. I've always felt he was innocent.
00:29:35
>> Eric Fischer defended Tim at trial. >> I really did not think Tim Masters could
00:29:41
pull this off and leave not a single shred of physical evidence. >> The most compelling argument for me was
00:29:50
who else could it possibly be? Nobody else had a motive. Nobody else had the opportunity.
00:29:58
Nobody else had the weapons. This is the guy. >> Their best evidence, those incriminating
00:30:08
drawings and star expert witness Malloyy's interpretation of what they meant. >> We drew a lot of similarities between
00:30:16
the drawings and our crime scene to such an extent the defense thought that we were crazy.
00:30:23
My stories and drawings were gruesome, violent, but no one was stabbed in the back. No one was sexually mutilated.
00:30:31
>> As for that one incriminating drag drawing, Tim has always said he made it after seeing the body.
00:30:40
>> She didn't get a nail driven through her tongue. She wasn't a skeleton. She wasn't Freddy Krueger. She wasn't a
00:30:45
dinosaur. David Wymore, who represented Masters, said the state built its case not around evidence, but around fear.
00:30:53
>> You bring in the psychologist to basically just scare him to death with these drawings that Tim did. You know,
00:31:00
oh, this is evidence of a sexual homicide and be scared. And they were scared. Terry Gilmore in his rebuttal clothes
00:31:10
held up the photograph that we had of Peggy Hetrick's vaginal area that showed the mutilation to it.
00:31:19
And then we blew up the little drawing that he did and put them side by side and the resemblance was uncanny. I mean,
00:31:26
the jurors were just bowled over. More than a decade after the crime, it took the jury just a day and a half to
00:31:39
convict Tim Masters of first-degree murder. >> I didn't think for a minute that I would
00:31:43
lose a trial. I didn't think I it was possible be to be convicted for something I didn't do.
00:31:49
>> He was sentenced to life behind bars without parole. >> There's no holidays in prison.
00:32:02
No birthdays, no Christmas. >> But many birthdays would go by before a startling revelation that would
00:32:11
challenge Tim's conviction. >> You have a full-blown sex offender who lived 200 yards directly across from
00:32:18
where the body was found. >> He's a pervert. He's a voyer. >> Was there a much more likely suspect?
00:32:42
Nobody else had a motive. Nobody else had the opportunity. Nobody else had the weapons.
00:32:46
>> Prosecutors were delighted with the guilty verdict in the Tim Masters case. >> Which way we going?
00:32:52
>> Who else could it possibly be? >> The answer to that was right under their noses. According to Tim's lawyers, at a
00:32:59
house in Tim's old neighborhood, also bordering the field where Peggy Hedrickk's body was found. 4 years
00:33:07
before Tim's arrest, police were summoned there to another mind-boggling crime scene.
00:33:13
>> I saw what had gone on inside the Hammond house and saw what he did and I was shocked.
00:33:21
Then patrol officer Linda Wheeler helped search the home of a prominent eye surgeon, Dr. Richard Hammond.
00:33:29
>> Highly educated man with a very sick perversion that I just don't understand.
00:33:37
>> A perversion with some eerie similarities to the Peggy Hetrich case secretly played out in the guest
00:33:44
bathroom of the Hammond house. There was a young uh college student who was housesitting and as she's sitting on the
00:33:53
potty, she thought that it was strange that there was a lot of lights in there. She thought she could see something in
00:34:03
the vent right in front of the toilet. She was right. Behind that vent and two others, Dr. Hammond's bathroom video
00:34:12
cameras were woring away. When you walk in the bathroom and hit the light, it activates the camera.
00:34:19
>> Each of them says master's lawyer David Wymore positioned with loving care. It
00:34:25
>> shows shower cam and toilet cam. So you sit on the toilet and this camera is directly across from your crotch. And he
00:34:32
would calibrate this so that he could actually read the fine print on a Lysol can.
00:34:37
>> You mean when he was trying to set it up? >> Yeah, he's setting it so that he could
00:34:40
get a really good closeup. Why did he put the toilet roll there? >> He couldn't really figure out who's on
00:34:47
it unless he could get you to lean over to go for the toilet roll and stick your
00:34:51
face in the camera. >> Apparently, autofocus was the doctor's undoing. >> I was a policeman in Fort Collins when
00:34:58
it happened. David Michaelelsson says that when the puzzled houses sitter heard an unmistakable sound,
00:35:06
>> she started investigating >> and she moved her hand and she heard it go and then she moved it back and it was
00:35:14
and then when she got down on the floor and looked in the the louvers of the false heat duct, then the camera would
00:35:21
go and to focus in on because she's so close. Then she knew it was a camera. a gasast. She called the police.
00:35:29
>> This is the inside of that secret room. >> In a locked room next to the bathroom,
00:35:34
they found an elaborate taping system. In a nearby storage locker, an estimated $13,000
00:35:42
worth of pornographic material. >> Yeah, he had kept the receipts >> and everywhere detailed files and stacks
00:35:49
of videotapes. >> These are some of the 300 tapes of these victims. >> He's keeping records of every single
00:35:54
one. >> Meticulous records. He would rate them. He would make a compilation tape so that
00:35:58
if you came over to the house, he would splice on, you would have your own tape.
00:36:02
So as you grew, he could follow you. >> A file for each victim, houses, family, friends,
00:36:09
78 victims in all, Wymore says. Among them, this woman, >> his daughter and I went to high school
00:36:17
together, >> who asked us to obscure her face. >> I felt sick. I felt physically sick
00:36:24
and I just thought, "Oh my god. I'm not over it. I don't know that I ever will be over it."
00:36:35
After his arrest, Dr. Hammond spent several days in a psychiatric unit and then was released on bond. Days later,
00:36:43
he checked into this Denver motel, hooked himself up to an IV filled with cyanide, and committed suicide.
00:36:55
>> Have you ever seen anything like this? I mean, you've been doing this for a long
00:36:58
time. >> No, this this guy's a over-the-top uh obsessive voyer pervert. >> But the most astonishing thing, Master's
00:37:06
lawyers say, is that police never investigated Dr. Hammond in connection with the Hetric murder. So could Dr.
00:37:14
Hammond see the location of the body from his house? >> You could oversee the field where Peggy
00:37:21
Hedrickk's body was. Dr. Hammond, a voyer with surgical skills, obsessed with female body parts who lived as
00:37:30
close to the crime scene as masters did. Despite this handwritten note in the Hammond file, look into Hetric, Brick
00:37:38
was running the show. >> I talked to Brick in the house because we looked out the master bedroom
00:37:45
>> and did you say the words Peggy Hetrick and my god, this is look at this. How
00:37:49
can this not be related >> numerous times? >> And he said, >> "No answer." Special prosecutor Don Quick, who years
00:37:57
later would review this entire case, says that camera receipts provided by Hammond's wife, show he'd started the
00:38:04
taping years after the Hetric murder. No reason police should have linked the two.
00:38:11
>> There's no physical evidence tying Dr. Hammond to the crime. >> The same could be said about Tim
00:38:16
Masters, but when it came to circumstantial evidence, >> Dr. Dr. Hammond wasn't standing next to
00:38:22
the body the morning that that she was killed. Dr. Hammond didn't then go to work and not call the authorities.
00:38:30
Dr. Hammond's briefcase wasn't opened up and a picture of a person being dragged
00:38:35
with blood coming from their back and heels on the ground much like the victim was dragged. Dr. Hammond, when you go
00:38:41
back to his house, they didn't find grizzly drawings of people being stabbed and slashed.
00:38:49
You have a full-blown sex offender lived right across the street from where her body is found who has an obsession with
00:38:57
the most intimate parts of the vagina and breasts and you have a body in the field missing those parts and he's an
00:39:04
eye surgeon and you're acting like it doesn't connect. Whether or not Dr. Hammond really had
00:39:10
anything to do with Peggy Hedrickk's murder probably never will be known in part because of what police did here at
00:39:18
the Lammer County landfill just 6 months after Dr. Hammond's suicide. >> They're out at the landfill mashing up
00:39:27
with a grater all these tapes. >> They destroyed all the evidence. >> Every bit of it.
00:39:31
>> Why? >> Pass Broadick. He's the one that ordered it. >> They were destroyed and we should talk
00:39:36
about why they were destroyed. You've got all these victims that are on those tapes that were calling us and had
00:39:43
legitimate concerns about the transfer of those images, which is a real issue in today's digital world. It had nothing
00:39:51
to do with the master's case or the murder of Peggy Hetrickch. There's no connection between the two of them.
00:39:57
>> When I found out they were going to destroy him, I just I lost it >> because Detective Michaelelsson wondered
00:40:04
what if Dr. Hammond had been secretly videotaping years earlier than police thought. What if in all those hours of
00:40:13
stored videotapes, you thought Peggy Hedrickk might be on those tapes? >> Yes. I wanted to watch every one of the
00:40:20
tapes seized because I thought she could have been there. >> Anybody do that? >> No.
00:40:27
>> Why not? >> I don't know. He was taking pictures of what was removed from Hedrickk.
00:40:37
>> But at the time of Tim's trial, his lawyers had never even heard of Dr. Hammond. And Eric Fiser isn't surprised
00:40:44
that prosecutors didn't enlighten him. >> If we have a pervert living across the
00:40:50
street, their complete argument that nobody else could have done this, which is their whole closing argument, goes
00:40:56
away. They cannot make that argument and their case falls apart. >> Fort Collins police kept the specifics
00:41:07
of Dr. Hammond's activities from the public. His name never was brought up in court. That alone, Tim's outraged
00:41:16
attorneys say, justifies a new trial. >> Comparing Tim Masters to Dr. Richard Hammond, Dr. Richard Hammond would be a
00:41:27
super suspect. Tim Masters would be a ridiculous suspect. >> Convincing a judge of that is Tim
00:41:34
Masters only hope for freedom. >> This special two-part edition of 48 Hours will continue.
00:42:19
this. special two-part edition of 48 Hours continues drawn to murder. February 11th, 1987.
00:42:52
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
00:43:05
it was a mannequin and that someone was playing some kind of sick joke on me. Peggy Hetric, a woman who lived in Fort
00:43:16
Collins, was found brutally murdered in a field. When the Fort Collins police began to investigate the case, they
00:43:22
looked at a number of suspects. One of those suspects was a 15-year-old Tim Masters, who lived next to the field. He
00:43:29
had gone up to the body that morning, hadn't reported it. >> Tim was very introverted and very shy
00:43:34
and very quiet. Didn't have a lot of friends. They went to his house and they found
00:43:40
very graphic drawings and writings as well as a large knife collection. >> Would we bring you in here without some
00:43:46
kind of proof? >> Right away they started saying, "I know you did this. >> She's dead."
00:43:51
>> We thought the right thing to do is to cooperate with the police. >> Tim was branded the lead suspect in a
00:43:58
horrific sexual mutilation and murder at age 15. Tim has not had a life since age
00:44:05
15. Through the years, they focused on Tim Masters. >> I think that the lead detective,
00:44:14
Detective Broadick, in this case, was so obsessed and so convinced of Tim Masters
00:44:19
guilt, he was willing to do anything to get a conviction of Tim Masters. In this
00:44:24
case, >> the real hope was that there'd be some physical evidence. There'd be a fingerprint. There'd be something that
00:44:31
we'd come up with that would match up with him. And that just didn't happen. He works for 10 11 years.
00:44:40
>> There were obviously other avenues that should have been explored that were not.
00:44:46
>> They got an arrest warrant for Mr. Masters and charged him with first-degree murder of Peggy Hetrickch.
00:44:52
>> I really did not think Tim Masters could pull this off and leave not a single
00:44:58
shred of physical evidence. >> Much of the prosecution's case is expected to come from a psychologist.
00:45:05
The doodles are the evidence. I never thought there was a chance in the world that they would convict me without
00:45:10
evidence, but they did. It was just totally surreal. How could this happen? How could I end up in here for something
00:45:25
I didn't even do? After being pursued for years, Tim Masters now was in prison for life
00:45:34
without parole. >> Yeah. Jeez. How do you describe that to someone who hasn't experienced it? It's
00:45:39
just unbelievable. >> At his lowest point, he says he even considered suicide, but it just seemed
00:45:46
too much like giving up. >> I didn't do this. I couldn't let him win that easy. I couldn't leave my family like that.
00:45:58
He appealed his conviction. He lost. He appealed that. He lost again. Finally, in a lastditch effort, he
00:46:07
appealed again. This time claiming ineffective counsel. >> Every day, I'd work on it a couple hours
00:46:13
a day. People would be walking past my cell on the way to child, and there'd be papers and books spread all over my bed.
00:46:20
But I didn't expect anything to come from it. But then, uh, Maria got appointed. This was actually one of my
00:46:25
first postconviction cases. >> Then 36-year-old courtappointed attorney Maria Lou says that when the gigantic
00:46:31
master's file landed on her desk in 2003, she had no idea what to think. >> So, you sort of have to work unravel the
00:46:40
mystery basically as to whether or not this person deserves a new trial. >> She hunkered down and started reading
00:46:47
>> and I didn't think he was innocent right off the bat. >> Then she watched those police
00:46:51
interrogation tapes. You shocked the hell out of everybody. >> I believe it was five different police
00:46:57
officers tag teaming him, doing everything. Good cop, bad cop, military cop, nice cop.
00:47:03
>> That's the one that is dead. Was she walking? What happened? >> It was you. >> You did it. What happened?
00:47:10
>> I don't know what happened. I didn't do nothing. I didn't do this. >> That's when I was like, "Oh my god, he
00:47:18
is innocent." And then when I met Tim in the prison, he was more focused on us proving his innocence than he was on
00:47:27
getting out, which to me says a lot. >> You're pretty much Tim Masters's only hope at that point,
00:47:33
>> right? >> What's that like? >> Stressful. It's really overwhelming because you
00:47:38
know in your heart that somebody is wrongfully convicted. With so much at stake and with little
00:47:45
trial experience, Maria called in flamboyant defense attorney David Wymore. >> Usually, there's some evidence that
00:47:52
indicates somebody, right? This there was no evidence in this case. >> Even so, he knew that requests for new
00:47:58
trials almost never are granted. When you went into this, what did you think the odds were?
00:48:04
>> 100 to one. Then 100 to one I'd lose. >> 100 to one you'd lose. >> Yes. Wymore nevertheless joined Lou in
00:48:13
digging through 10,000 pages of police and court files, some 20 years old. It >> was just a lot of hard work.
00:48:20
>> To their amazement, they soon realized that there were important items of evidence never given to Tim's original
00:48:27
lawyers, although by law they were entitled to them. >> Uncovering this stuff, I mean, I don't know how to
00:48:34
put it other than just it's an aha moment, you It's not, you know, it's like ah,
00:48:39
>> a man claiming he was wrongly convicted of murder fights for a new trial. >> People of the state of Colorado versus
00:48:46
Timothy Masters. >> By November 2007, hearings were well underway. Tim Masters best shot at
00:48:53
winning a new trial. >> There was no physical evidence linking Mr. Master to the crime.
00:48:58
>> Good afternoon. I'm Don Quick. I'm the district attorney for Adam. Special prosecutor Don Quick and his team
00:49:03
representing the state of Colorado were new faces in court, but the original investigator Jim Brderick was there as
00:49:09
well to advise. He told a local interviewer at the time he had an open mind. >> Hey, if there's evidence out there,
00:49:17
let's see it. But there's nobody that's come to me, and I haven't seen yet anybody that can controvert all these
00:49:24
facts that point to his guilt. It is clearly a concerted effort to hide evidence in order to convict Tim
00:49:31
Masters. >> It's mindboggling. >> On the stand, Tim's original lawyers, Nathan Chambers and Eric Fiser, who lost
00:49:39
the case, defended the job they had done, given all they didn't know. >> Rodri knew about Hammond and just
00:49:46
ignored it, >> especially about the existence of Dr. Richard Hammond. When you're looking into Dr. Hammond,
00:50:05
you're looking into a sex offense, right? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. >> Dr. Hammond, a neighbor of Tims, was
00:50:11
arrested some years after the Hedrickk murder for secretly videotaping women in his bathroom.
00:50:21
This guy set up a studio to get closeup of vaginas and nipples. And you have a body in the field missing
00:50:32
those parts. >> A great alternate suspect, the defense says, but his name was never mentioned
00:50:40
in the original trial. >> Got to give me the biggest sexual pervert in the history of South Fort
00:50:45
Collins. >> He is a superb suspect. >> Jeez, that's funny. One guy was a doodler and the other guy's a sex
00:50:51
offender. Did anybody say that? >> And David Wymore argues that Dr. Hammond's very existence.
00:50:57
So close to the crime scene defines reasonable doubt. >> They have the same alibi. Uh Tim Masters
00:51:04
dad says that he's home all night in his trailer. Dr. Ham's wife says he's home all night in the house.
00:51:11
The difference is is that Tim Masters doesn't have 300 videootapes of people's vaginas and nipples at his house and
00:51:19
he's also not an eye surgeon. >> Court has to impress on the Fort Collins police. It's over.
00:51:25
>> In court, Wymore presents a long list of other crucial evidence he says was withheld from the defense and as it
00:51:33
turns out from prosecutors as well. It includes Brick's notes on conversations with a former FBI profiler,
00:51:42
>> Roy Hazelwood. I mean, he's raising the questions we're raising. >> Roy Hazelwood, according to the defense,
00:51:49
questioned the very meaning of Tim's drawings. >> Hazlewood looked at these drawings and
00:51:55
said, "No, these are just doodles and they don't reflect what happened to Peggy Hetric."
00:52:01
>> Extremely important, extremely relevant. We should have had it. Then there was the testimony of the
00:52:07
state's star witness, Dr. Reed Baloy, who analyzed the drawings. >> I have absolutely no doubt in my mind
00:52:14
that Tim Masters was the killer, >> but he now says his opinion was based on incomplete information provided by the
00:52:21
authorities. Dr. Malloy also had written that Peggy Hetrick's wounds appeared to be
00:52:29
surgical, an opinion the jury never heard because Jim Brick didn't turn over the doctor's
00:52:36
full 300page report. >> All I know is we should have gotten them. They knew they existed.
00:52:43
>> Without question, the wounds to her vagina are surgical. >> And that big question of surgical skill
00:52:50
came up with yet another expert police consulted. Dr. Choy basically said it would be hard cut for him to make and he
00:52:57
was a plastic surgeon. >> But the views of Dr. Richard Choy never surfaced in court either.
00:53:05
Not says former cop David Michaelelsson that it takes all these experts to see the obvious.
00:53:12
>> It wasn't done by a boy with a del flashlight in his mouth and a pocketk knife.
00:53:18
crawl out of his window, stab a lady, circumcise her. Didn't happen. Impossible.
00:53:30
The defense says police never revealed to either side exactly how far they went to get Masters to incriminate himself.
00:53:40
>> Planting newspapers suggesting that they were close to finding the killer. They were actually planting his mom's
00:53:50
obituary on his friend's truck. >> They schemed and planned this elaborate psychological experiment on him and he
00:53:58
passed it. >> This is outrageous. I strongly believe that this police department
00:54:07
framed Tim Masters. >> But this was equal opportunity withholding. material wasn't turned over
00:54:15
to the defense, but not to prosecutors either. Brderick concedes it may not look very good.
00:54:21
>> So, you're just sitting there listening to them say there's this, this, this,
00:54:24
and this, and this looks like a frame job. >> That that's that's a position and a
00:54:29
strategy they took without a doubt. >> And it wasn't. >> Oh, absolutely not. You know, there was
00:54:35
no effort to to pinpoint just Tim Masters on this case. He says that while he may not have
00:54:43
turned over all his notes, the defense had the same information in reports he did turn over.
00:54:49
>> I made detailed, thorough notes, detailed, thorough police reports. My notes were represented inside those
00:54:57
police reports. >> One special prosecutor's report called aspects of the police investigation
00:55:04
disturbing. We have repeatedly said that we will go where the evidence takes us.
00:55:10
>> But Don Quick insists that not only was it not a frame up, the work of Brderick,
00:55:15
a 29-year veteran cop, was meticulous and detailed. >> But all the things that didn't get
00:55:24
turned over, >> yes, >> are things that potentially could have helped the defense.
00:55:30
>> Yes. >> I mean, it doesn't seem to be any omission of things that hurt the defense.
00:55:33
>> I would agree with your characterization. And the question is why was just exculpatory stuff withheld?
00:55:38
>> Well, I mean obviously the defense um is free to make that argument. >> So any mistakes that were made here were
00:55:44
honest mistakes. >> Sure. >> When you know that you have evidence that indicates it's innocent and you
00:55:52
don't turn it over, uh you don't get the benefit of doubt from me that it was a mistake.
00:56:01
I want to draw your attention to page 1242 on a police report. >> Toward the end of the hearing, the sheer
00:56:07
volume of Brick's material became an issue itself. >> David Wymore in Rio. They would be
00:56:12
questioning an witness and they would see Lieutenant Brick go over to a box and David Wymore asked one day and says,
00:56:19
"What is that box and why is he pulling stuff out of that box and why don't I have it?"
00:56:24
>> Personal files just sitting there in court. Frustrated, the judge decides it all should be turned over immediately.
00:56:33
>> Every time I'd come into court, we'd get a new piece of evidence. We just kept
00:56:37
finding stuff that's hidden. Super secret file after super secret file. >> Where was this on April 12th, 2006? I
00:56:44
mean, where did this thing come from? And I went and looked. >> But ironically, because Brick kept
00:56:50
everything. >> Footprint number four looks like Tom McCo. The defense is able to produce
00:56:55
what it says is the most convincing argument yet, that he and the prosecutors had this murder all wrong.
00:57:17
There was no effort to pinpoint just Tim Masters on this case. It just doesn't add up that there was
00:57:25
anything other than to just do the best job we could with a case that could have
00:57:30
remained unsolved. >> I'm Jim Jim Broadick. How you doing? >> In 1987, Jim Brick knows in his own mind
00:57:42
that Tim Masters committed this homicide. Veteran crime scene investigator Barry
00:57:48
Gets, now working for Master's Defense, says he realized the extent of Jim Brick's tunnel vision only as the
00:57:56
hearings to win a new trial for Tim neared an end. >> Do you ever recall ever seeing a
00:58:01
photograph of foot impression number four in the ground? >> We're in open court and Dave Wymore is
00:58:08
talking to Eric Fischer, one of Tim's original defense attorneys. From my understanding, Brick had these in his
00:58:14
file and he didn't give them to us. >> The showstopper emerges from Brick's box of personal files.
00:58:22
>> Where did this thing come from? >> This whole envelope. >> Yeah, the whole envelope. I never saw
00:58:26
it, judge, until today. >> In that envelope, enhanced photographs of footprints from the crime scene. Two
00:58:35
of which, the defense says are consistent with a Tom McCann dress shoe. There's two tomic ants along the blood
00:58:43
trail. One at the curb and after making several turns 30 ft in there's the Toman
00:58:50
again next to the blood trail in blood. >> Tim Masters never owned a pair of Tom
00:58:58
McCann's. How much of this did the original defense know? >> Well, they don't know this. We didn't
00:59:03
have a photograph of number three or four where you could see horizontal lines, but the FBI did and Lieutenant
00:59:11
Brick did and had they given it to us would might have made a huge difference at trial.
00:59:16
>> They got all of that. Everything was turned over to him. >> On this point, Lieutenant Brick is
00:59:21
adamant Fiser, under oath or not, is flatout wrong. >> Every enhanced picture there was of
00:59:29
every footprint was turned over to them. Yes. The problem, he says, is that the prints
00:59:34
aren't clearly identifiable as Tom McCann's. To this, the defense pulls out another
00:59:41
note from that treasure trove of documents. >> He definitely knew cuz he wrote a note
00:59:46
to himself that he knew. >> He writes, "Number 105 is messed up. Brand pattern looks like Tommy can
00:59:53
shoe." >> If the jury saw that, how do you convict him after that? Now armed with all this new evidence,
01:00:04
Master's lawyers have come up with their own scenario of what they think really happened to Peggy Hedrickk.
01:00:12
>> Who did this is two people, one of them wearing a Tomakan shoe doing this. >> David Wymore thinks it all began in a
01:00:20
car. >> She's being abducted. Somebody's got a knife to her cheek around her like that.
01:00:27
She knows the gigs up. She opens the t car door, starts getting her right foot out. He grabs her and stabs her.
01:00:33
>> Key to Wymore's theory are Peggy Hetrick's boots. >> If you look at these two boots, you'll
01:00:38
see that this boot has normal wear. >> But in this police photo, abrasions are clearly visible on the sole of the right
01:00:47
boot. >> What the right boot shows us is that she stuck her foot out of the car.
01:00:54
In tests, the Master's Defense team was able to reproduce these abrasions. >> You have somebody stick their foot out
01:01:02
of the car door putting pressure on it. Then you only have to drive like about five or six miles an hour for 10 ft and
01:01:09
you'll reproduce that scuff mark on the right foot every time. >> And they believe Peggy Hetric is stabbed
01:01:14
being pulled back into the car because Barry get says the holes in her clothing prove it. The cut in the coat, the cut
01:01:23
in the blouse, and the cut in her body do not line up. You have to move the blouse one inch to her left. You have to
01:01:29
move the coat two inches to her left in order for that wound to line up. You have pulling on your coat and blouse. I
01:01:37
stab you one time in the back. >> So, she's killed in the car, >> right? And the car then could be
01:01:42
anywhere. Wymore theorizes that her killer or killers next took her somewhere that
01:01:49
gave them privacy, light, and room to work. >> They lay her on a table, they wash her,
01:01:57
they excise her. Then they carry her and dump her in the field. >> Back at the field, Barry Get says the
01:02:06
evidence leads him to conclude that the body was dragged only a short distance down the embankment.
01:02:13
Where you have drag marks, you have no blood. Where you have blood, you have no drag marks.
01:02:20
>> You would expect, were she being dragged to find heel marks. >> And on her jeans, you would see the
01:02:26
marks that the grass makes and the dirt makes and the blood makes. >> Marks like these on Get's own daughter
01:02:32
after she helped him reenact a dragging scenario. >> You don't see those on her because her
01:02:38
legs are not in contact with the ground when she goes through there. No. Get says two people carried Peggy
01:02:45
Hetrick's body to its resting place. Her bloody coat painting a trail. She is carried. Her heels are not in
01:02:56
contact with the ground except for that run down the slope. That's what happened to her. It is as
01:03:04
clear as the nose on your face. If true, that makes Tim Master's drag drawing, a lynch pin of the
01:03:13
prosecution's case, a lot less relevant. >> There's nothing accurate about his drawing.
01:03:20
>> I think the footprints alone deserve to give him a new trial. I thought Dr. Hammond alone deserved to give him a new
01:03:25
trial. The psychological experiment alone deserved to give him a new trial. The non-disclosure of all these things,
01:03:31
but I never count my chickens before they hatch. You know, I got to hear it from the court. trial they gave him.
01:03:36
>> Because as damning as that list sounds, these hearings are far from over. The
01:03:41
prosecution has yet to present its answers to the defense's many charges. >> This is at the end of the day a search
01:03:47
for the truth. >> The bar for granting a new trial is very high. >> It's so hard to undo a conviction.
01:03:54
>> I just want them to fix the >> Wyomore and Lou would love some new evidence to lower that bar a bit and
01:04:00
modern science could provide it. The two individuals that carried her would have
01:04:05
transferred their DNA onto her clothing as they carried her into the field. >> But can investigators retrieve DNA after
01:04:13
all this time? >> We're one month shy of 20 years. Are we still going to find the DNA? We don't
01:04:18
know, but we're going to try. >> With Tim Master's future hanging in the balance, the defense team is about to go
01:04:24
halfway around the world and risk everything to find out. This was a very emotional case, I I
01:05:00
think for on so many levels >> you have a woman murdered in a small town, some sort of mutilation going on.
01:05:10
>> Bad case. >> Lots of pressure to solve it. >> Oh yeah. >> It wasn't their job to solve it.
01:05:17
>> I believed in him and I believed in the case. >> But Tim Master's attorneys, David Wymore
01:05:21
and Maria Lou, knew that new evidence of another killer might be the only way to
01:05:27
get their client out of prison. So, in the winter of 2007, they took a huge gamble, betting that there would be DNA
01:05:36
on the clothes Peggy Hetrich wore when she was killed, and that it would help identify her murderer. DNA was such an
01:05:43
infant science back then that although investigators did analyze hair, blood, and fibers, no DNA tests ever had been
01:05:51
done on the clothing. But now that testing was possible, was it also smart? Would it help Tim
01:05:58
Masters? >> My job was to exclude Tim. >> There's not a moment when you said yikes. You know what? If what if this
01:06:07
DNA comes back and it's and it's Tim's? >> I'm a trial lawyer. There's always a chance. And always in the back of your
01:06:13
mind is yikes. >> If it's Tim Masters, it's Tim Masters. >> Former Fort Collins cop Linda Wheeler by
01:06:19
now a firm believer in Tim's innocence, was all for it. >> Go where the evidence leads you.
01:06:24
>> This is what what got from this location on the panties. Plus, she knew just the
01:06:29
man to do it. >> You compare the numbers. >> He has developed such an expertise of be
01:06:34
able to find the evidence, the trace evidence. If it's still there on the clothing, then Richard can find it.
01:06:42
>> Come here. Joy. Richard is Richard Illandbal, a DNA expert who with his wife Selma, a forensic medical examiner,
01:06:51
loves nothing more than a chance to use hard science to far it out the sorted secrets of crime.
01:06:58
>> And Linda was very persistent. She says this is a wrongful conviction. >> Pretty um uncommon to start a DNA
01:07:03
laboratory in in a farm, I think. >> Show me around a little bit. The only problem for the defense, why did you
01:07:09
want to bring this out here? They had to travel thousands of miles to, of all places, here in the Netherlands to a
01:07:16
tiny lab in this quaint farmhouse some 60 miles from Amsterdam. >> We have our DNA trace recovery in in
01:07:24
this building. We also have DNA isolation or DNA extraction. >> What's here? >> This is our uh blood stain room. And
01:07:31
>> is there somebody in there? >> Yeah, we have our our testing doll. We do training courses for judges and
01:07:38
criminal law. >> What is all that? What you see there is an arterial gush. >> The Illan bombs jokingly call it the
01:07:44
crime farm. >> Crime farm. >> The crime farm. Yes. >> What was the biggest challenge as you
01:07:50
approached this >> to to get this evidence to Holland? I think this was quite unique.
01:07:55
>> I believe never never happened that case in the States went out the states. >> David Wymore and Maria Lou said, "Linda,
01:08:03
they'll never let that evidence out of the United States. Never happened before." The prosecution fought hard to
01:08:08
prevent it happening this time, but in the end, >> Judge Weatherbe went, "Okay, I'm going
01:08:14
to allow that." >> The judge did insist that someone had to escort the clothes to Holland. Barry
01:08:21
Gets volunteered. >> I I assume you didn't you didn't check this, right? This was
01:08:25
>> this was carry on. >> Get with the Colorado State Crime Lab for 22 years. In January of 2007, clutching his
01:08:36
priceless suitcase of evidence, he flew to Amsterdam, took the hour-long drive to the Illan
01:08:46
Bomb crime farm. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. You had a boot trip? >> I did. That's it.
01:08:52
>> And began helping Richard carefully unpack Peggy Hetrick's clothes. Jeans, a blouse, underwear.
01:08:59
>> This is all the victim's clothing. >> Okay. readying the individual pieces for
01:09:04
testing. >> So, we've got the bra. So, the bra is it's JT47. Yep. >> As usual, Richard Ianbomb would use a
01:09:11
most unusual approach. >> What he's looking for is not the blood stains, not the saliva stains, not the
01:09:18
semen stains. He's looking for skin cells that are transferred onto clothing when someone uses a lot of force.
01:09:25
>> Skin cells and so-called touch DNA are Richard's specialty. He's a pioneer in
01:09:32
this approach. The same that finally cleared the parents of John Benet Ramsay of her murder.
01:09:37
>> We finally found skin cells on the on the um under the armpits. >> The technique which they've used in
01:09:43
dozens of cases involves not just being able to retrieve the skin cells, but in knowing exactly where to look. How
01:09:52
important is force to this? Like if I if I just reach over and go like that, have
01:09:56
I left DNA? you you will leave DNA but there's no laboratory in the world you will get a good profile out of that
01:10:03
>> that's very important because the upper skin th those cells are dead the DNA there is not very good and by using
01:10:10
force you shed those cell layers and then you come to good layers where the DNA is better and by using force on
01:10:18
something you leave those cells behind and it are those cells where we get the DNA from
01:10:23
>> the way the Dutch uh forensic scientists look at it is you have to understand the
01:10:27
crime first, where are the most likely places that a perpetrator or perpetrators would touch her in an
01:10:34
aggressive manner. >> And we need as much information as we can get. >> Before he even looks for the DNA,
01:10:40
Richard tries to reconstruct the murder step by step. >> He looks where it's most likely logical
01:10:48
that a perpetrator has grabbed and possibly has applied force to clothing or to a victim.
01:10:58
Richard and Selma often will even reenact the crime as they did here with the help of Barry Gats.
01:11:05
>> Where would I grab somebody? One to stab them, one to carry them, one to pull
01:11:12
their pants and panties down, etc. And that's where we collected samples. photo. We worked 10 days collecting
01:11:19
samples from these clothing and looked at them and you know with different lighting, infrared, UV, normal lighting,
01:11:27
etc. We did more than 60 samples and we did more than 400 DNA profiles. >> And remarkably, more than 20 years after
01:11:37
the murder, it all paid off. What exactly did he find? >> Full profile of a male on the inside of
01:12:00
the underpants of Peggy Hendrick. right where he had hypothesized where somebody would with force pull
01:12:10
down the underwear. >> Not only was there DNA, there was enough to analyze >> and the results were uh it's not Tim on
01:12:25
any place. >> His DNA is not on the clothing, >> just as his supporters expected. But
01:12:31
they also knew that not finding Tim's DNA wasn't by itself going to set him free. So when the DNA came back and it's
01:12:40
not him, why isn't that alone enough to vacate the conviction? >> Because they could always hang their hat
01:12:48
on that Tim Masters, he was such a good murderer that he didn't leave any evidence behind. They've said that from
01:12:55
day one. >> This DNA was on incriminating uh uh sites on her clothing. And then if you
01:13:01
really want to make it clear that Tim Masters didn't do it, you have to find the the one
01:13:05
>> the person who left the DNA. Let him tell. >> Was it perhaps from Tim's neighbor, Dr.
01:13:11
Richard Hammond, who 8 years after Peggy's murder was arrested for videotaping women in his bathroom?
01:13:18
>> Everybody was thinking, I think in the defense side that that Dr. Hammond was
01:13:23
involved in this and we thought the same. >> You did. So yeah, at that time I think
01:13:28
>> he looked like a good candidate. >> Yeah, >> but they didn't have a sample of Dr.
01:13:37
Hammond's DNA for comparison. And without it, the Dutch couldn't rule him in or out. The thing is that was just
01:13:45
fine with the master's defense because they needed to keep suspicion of Dr. Hammond alive. If DNA cleared him, then
01:13:52
the spotlight would be right back on Tim. Putting Dr. Hammond aside then, the Dutch ran more tests on DNA samples from
01:14:02
cops, investigators, even from Matt Zolner. Remember him? Peggy Hedrickk's ex-boyfriend.
01:14:09
>> Are you the one who's dead, Peggy? >> Whose date gave him an alibi for the night Peggy was killed. You basically
01:14:16
tested the ex-boyfriend's DNA in order to rule him out. >> To exclude him. >> No, that's why he was so shocked when he
01:14:23
entered the room. >> Yeah. shocked because the DNA didn't exclude him. And >> I was sitting behind my computer and the
01:14:30
door opened and Richard said, "It's Zner. It's Zner." And I thought, "What is he talking about?"
01:14:39
Matt Zner, who told police that except for that brief encounter in the parking lot, he'd not even seen Peggy Hetrick
01:14:46
for a week. Not only was Zner's DNA on the inside waistband of Peggy's underpants,
01:14:54
it also turned up on the cuffs of her blouse, where one might grab if picking up a body.
01:15:03
>> There's no question this is the ex-boyfriend's DNA inside the waistband of her underpants.
01:15:08
>> Yes. >> Okay. Where does that leave him? >> Explain that one. This is him and only
01:15:14
him. No question. No question. Clearly Zner has many questions to answer. But what, if anything, does this
01:15:23
bombshell mean to Tim Masters in prison for the last 9 years? >> To me, it's not over yet. I mean, I'm
01:15:31
still dressed in orange. I'm still in a in a gel. For Tim Masters, that old cliche finally
01:15:56
is true. This really could be the first day of the rest of his life. What's the word of the day, Tim?
01:16:03
>> Uh, freedom. >> Tim is waiting for word on whether the Dutch DNA findings will persuade the
01:16:11
judge to grant him a new trial. Certainly, his excited lawyer thinks they should.
01:16:16
>> What they didn't have in 1999 was the DNA evidence. The person who killed her
01:16:20
touched her. >> Tim's gigantic family packs the courtroom, joining legions of other
01:16:30
supporters. Do you have a cell phone on? Please turn it off. Check your cell phones.
01:16:35
>> Not on hand is Jim Brderick called out of town on a family emergency. But from
01:16:41
their crime farm in Holland, Selma and Richard Einbomb are here. >> I would ask you to reserve any emotional
01:16:49
outburst. >> There's DNA from an alternate suspect on her body in a couple of places and not
01:16:54
Tim Masters. That's evidence that a jury, if it had been available back in 99, a jury should have heard.
01:17:02
>> The state confirmed the Dutch DNA results. And with that, the prosecutor takes bold action,
01:17:12
instructing his deputy to move for Tim Master's immediate release. >> And so, we would respectfully ask that
01:17:19
the court grant this motion. The court has reviewed the motion and the court grants the motion to vacate
01:17:28
the conviction and sentence and orders the uh release of the defendant. >> With that, the hearing abruptly ends.
01:17:37
The state's witnesses never even testify. And after more than nine years, Tim Masters is suddenly a free man.
01:18:02
Jim, what do you think? >> He is almost speechless. >> Jim, what do you think? >> It's not crowded, guys.
01:18:09
>> Still seeking it. >> Okay, let's clear a path here. Clear path. >> Not so his delirious family. Yes,
01:18:18
>> we did it. >> It's just a great feeling for me today. I'll tell you that. It's a long time
01:18:22
coming. >> I just want to uh thank my family and my friends who stuck with me all these
01:18:27
years. Without their support, I don't know if I could have made it through this.
01:18:30
>> We as a family have stayed together so much to support Tim and we continue to
01:18:36
support Tim and will. >> We never turn our back on him. Not once. We never will.
01:18:42
>> Guys, move. Thank you. Good luck, man. Thank you. >> How would you describe what this feeling
01:18:55
is like? Just imagine. Well, I don't even know if you if you could imagine spending all
01:19:01
that time up there in prison and finally being free after all these years. I don't even know how to answer that
01:19:08
question. >> What has surprised you the most? >> Surprised me the most? the price of
01:19:13
everything. I was not ready for that. >> Do you avoid sort of thinking about what
01:19:19
this cost you? >> No, not not necessarily. >> How would you quantify it? >> What I've lost.
01:19:28
Jeez. I mean, damn near 10 years of my life. I don't know how you put a price tag on
01:19:34
that. I mean, what's 10 years of your life worth? Especially 27 to 36. All I know is that you you can never get those
01:19:42
years back. >> But Tim Masters is determined to try. >> HCZ. >> So my vision is actually to the point
01:19:51
where I could legally drive. >> You can legally drive. >> 3 days after his release in 2008, the
01:19:57
state dropped all charges against Tim Masters. >> Do you think we'll ever know who killed
01:20:03
Peggy Hatrick? >> God, I don't know. I really don't know. I know who didn't. You know,
01:20:14
>> the DNA that freed Tim Masters leaves lingering questions about Peggy's ex-boyfriend, Matt Zner. He today lives
01:20:21
in Fort Collins, keeping a low profile. >> If he did it, he better get out of town.
01:20:28
>> Zner did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him. I mean, we're talking about skin cells
01:20:36
inside her underpants. This is not just, you know, >> the DNA materials were found in a couple
01:20:41
of places on the body that we had tested. >> Exactly. And that was enough to get Tim
01:20:45
Masters free. >> It's not enough to get anybody else arrested. >> You would have to ask the attorney
01:20:51
general on where he is on the arrest. >> The Colorado attorney general now has the hattrick case, but won't comment on
01:20:59
any aspect of it. Do you think realistically anybody absent a confession could be convicted for this
01:21:06
crime? >> No. I really don't. Since Richard Hammond is deceased, their defense attorney is going to say, "Look at this
01:21:13
guy. He's the one that did this. There's no way." He still may be the defense's favorite
01:21:20
suspect. But using a sample of Dr. Hammond's DNA provided by his wife, the state says he has been ruled out as the
01:21:29
killer. >> There is no evidence tying Dr. Hammond. He just happened to live in the
01:21:32
neighborhood. The court never ruled on whether the original defense lawyers did their jobs,
01:21:39
but Eric Fischer accepts some blame. >> Great day for Tim Masters. Not really a great day for me.
01:21:46
I am upset that this happened and happened on my watch. >> If the original prosecutors are upset,
01:21:53
they're not talking. Both were publicly reprimanded and fined for failing to disclose information to the defense.
01:22:03
But Tim doesn't blame them for what happened. >> It's pretty obvious who did this to me.
01:22:09
One detective, Jim Rodri. >> If Jim Brick were sitting where I'm sitting right now, what would you tell
01:22:14
him? >> Uh, I wouldn't talk to Jim Brick at this point. There's not a whole lot of love
01:22:20
between him and me. So, it'd be best if we just didn't speak to each other. >> But what would you like to say to him?
01:22:25
>> I'm not going to say on camera. What it really comes down to is I'm accountable to God and I'm I'm I'm
01:22:33
accountable to Peggy Hetrick. >> Looking back, Jim Brick, the man who pursued Tim Masters across decades, made
01:22:43
absolutely no apology for his actions. Do you believe he did it? >> Well, I I believe that I followed the
01:22:51
evidence. Okay. And the evidence pointed to Tim Masters. They find the exboyfriend's DNA inside her underpants,
01:23:00
on the cuffs of her blouse. Does that not give you any pause? >> Well, you can find DNA evidence um and
01:23:10
it may have an innocent explanation. So, >> ironically, Brick says Tim's lawyers
01:23:14
only had that crucial information because of him and his passion for saving everything. That
01:23:21
characterological trait of mine of wanting to hang on to information not knowing its future use has helped Tim
01:23:28
Masters because had I not done that it wouldn't have been a available to be tested.
01:23:33
>> Peggy Hedrickk's clothes would have been destroyed. >> Everything everything would have been
01:23:38
destroyed. >> That may not mean much to Tim Masters struggling to put together a new life.
01:23:45
>> Everybody ready? >> He's got some unlikely new friends. >> Thank you. Linda Wheeler, the first cop
01:23:52
to ever suspect he was guilty. >> This young man is going to lead a good, productive life.
01:23:58
>> Hey, my favorite uncle. What are you up to? >> Barry Gats, who travels with him in
01:24:03
Europe, beginning with Amsterdam, for an appearance with Richard and Selma on Dutch TV.
01:24:11
>> And they helped set them free, the innocent man who was imprisoned for 10 years. Very warm welcome for you, Tim
01:24:18
Masters. >> Thank you. and his lawyer, Maria Lou. >> Hey, what's up? >> Hey, what's going on?
01:24:23
>> Whose office he still visits regularly. >> So, what are you guys going to do today?
01:24:27
>> I have no idea. >> Without all of these people, there's no way that we would be where we are today.
01:24:33
>> He seems to regard you as a really good friend. >> Yeah. >> All of your stuff is now centralized.
01:24:40
>> He will be dear to me. Um, it took an entire village of people to free Tim Masters.
01:24:49
This is the kitchen to my mansion. >> He found a new apartment. >> Little utility area right here. Home
01:24:54
sweet home. >> No guards, no orders, no rules. >> For the last two years, I was in a 6x8
01:25:04
cell, which was about from this wall to that wall and about to here. >> Not surprising then that he relishes
01:25:15
walks in the great outdoors. I always love this place. I like the mountains, period.
01:25:21
There's a part of me that doesn't even want to start rebuilding my life because I'm afraid of losing it again.
01:25:28
>> I'm glad for him. I'm glad for him that he has his freedom. >> Peggy's brother, Tom Hrik, who has long
01:25:35
doubted Tim Masters was his sister's killer, greeted the news of his release with mixed feelings. But I'm also
01:25:42
measured because I want I want people to realize this is not over yet. Peggy is the ultimate victim in this.
01:25:53
Tim Masters got to go home. Peggy's not coming home. She's never coming home. She comes home
01:26:03
in in your heart and in your mind. And the murder that so shocked this peaceful town more than 20 years ago
01:26:12
seems as big a mystery now as it was back then. >> You've reached the Peggy Hetrich
01:26:18
investigation hotline at the Colorado Attorney General's office. Please leave any information you wish to provide.
01:27:08
Hey, hey, hey.