Peggy Hettrick

Case background and investigation

Peggy Hettrick, 37, was found dead on the morning of February 11, 1987, in an open field along the 3800 block of Landings Drive in southern Fort Collins, Colorado. The Larimer County coroner's office records that she had been stabbed in the back. Her body had also been sexually mutilated. A passing cyclist reported the discovery. According to published accounts she had last been seen leaving a nearby bar and restaurant in the early hours of that morning.

Attention quickly turned to Tim Masters, a 15-year-old high school sophomore who lived with his father in a trailer bordering the field. Masters told police he had seen the body on his way to the school bus but thought it was a mannequin. He was questioned at length but was not charged at the time. He went on to serve in the Navy and work as an aircraft mechanic.

More than a decade later Fort Collins police arrested Masters, relying heavily on violent drawings and writings he had produced as a teenager and on the opinion of a forensic psychologist. A jury convicted him of murder in March 1999 and he was sentenced to life in prison.

A new defense team appointed in the mid-2000s alleged that police and prosecutors had withheld evidence. During hearings that began in 2007, a special prosecutor, Adams County District Attorney Don Quick, agreed that material had not been disclosed. Testing commissioned by the defense at a Dutch laboratory, and confirmed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, found DNA on Hettrick's clothing that did not match Masters and was consistent with a man who had been considered early in the investigation, CNN reported. That man has not been charged.

On January 22, 2008, a judge vacated the conviction and Masters was released after more than nine years in custody; the charges were dismissed days later. Larimer County and the city of Fort Collins paid a combined $10 million to settle his civil claims. On June 28, 2011, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers announced that Masters had been cleared as a suspect following a review that included more than 170 interviews, further DNA analysis and grand jury testimony.

The lead detective, Lt. Jim Broderick, was indicted for perjury in 2010 and again in 2011; the charges were dismissed and he was not convicted. He resigned from the department in 2013. Two former prosecutors in the case, who had become judges, were censured and lost retention elections in 2010. Responsibility for the homicide investigation was transferred to the Colorado Attorney General's Office, which has used touch-DNA testing on the evidence, Westword reported. No arrest has followed, and the coroner continues to list the case among the county's unsolved homicides.