Case snapshot
Peggy Hettrick was found dead in a Fort Collins field in February 1987, her body mutilated and left in the snow. Police spent years building a case against a teenage neighbor with no physical evidence linking him to the crime. The real killer wouldn’t be identified for decades.
The discovery
On the morning of February 11, 1987, a jogger discovered Peggy Hettrick’s body in an open field near her Fort Collins, Colorado apartment. The 37-year-old had been stabbed once in the back. Her body showed signs of post-mortem mutilation. She was partially clothed, and investigators initially suspected sexual assault, though autopsy results would later complicate that theory.
Hettrick had last been seen alive the night before, walking near her apartment complex. She worked at a local restaurant and was known to take evening walks. The brutal nature of the crime sent shockwaves through the college town.
Fort Collins police had few leads. No murder weapon. No witnesses. The case began to grow cold almost immediately.
The wrong suspect
In 1989, more than two years after Peggy Hettrick’s murder, police turned their attention to Timothy Masters, a teenager who lived near the field where her body was found. Masters had discovered the body on his way to school the morning after the murder but didn’t report it. That decision would haunt him for decades.
Investigators found drawings in Masters’ home depicting violence and disturbing imagery. They interviewed him repeatedly. Masters had no criminal record, no history of violence, and no connection to Hettrick. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. No DNA. No fingerprints. No witnesses.
The case against him rested almost entirely on circumstantial evidence and the interpretation of his artwork by police psychologists who deemed him dangerous. In 1999, twelve years after Hettrick’s death, prosecutors charged Masters with first-degree murder.
At trial, the prosecution presented Masters’ drawings as proof of a violent mind. They pointed to his failure to report the body. They constructed a narrative that painted the quiet teenager as a killer, despite the absence of forensic evidence. The defense argued that the drawings were the work of a troubled teen coping with trauma, not a confession.
The jury convicted Timothy Masters of murdering Peggy Hettrick. He was sentenced to life in prison. He was 15 years old when Hettrick died. He was 28 when he was locked away for her murder.
The case unravels
Masters maintained his innocence from prison. His case caught the attention of advocacy groups and defense attorneys who began reviewing the evidence. What they found was alarming.
Crucial evidence had been withheld from the defense during trial. Police reports documenting other suspects were never turned over. DNA evidence that could have excluded Masters had not been tested. Investigators had focused so narrowly on Masters that they appeared to have ignored alternative leads.
In 2008, new DNA testing revealed male DNA on Hettrick’s body that did not match Timothy Masters. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation reviewed the case and found serious flaws in the original investigation. A judge vacated Masters’ conviction. He walked out of prison after serving nearly ten years for a crime he didn’t commit.
Masters filed a civil rights lawsuit against the City of Fort Collins and the investigators involved in his wrongful conviction. In 2010, the case settled for $10 million, one of the largest wrongful conviction settlements in Colorado history.
The real killer
While Timothy Masters rebuilt his life, the question remained: who killed Peggy Hettrick?
In 2011, Fort Collins police announced a breakthrough. DNA evidence from Hettrick’s body had been matched to Richard Hammond, a man who had lived near the crime scene in 1987 and had since died. Hammond had a history of violence against women and had been investigated for similar crimes in the area.
Hammond had been on investigators’ radar during the original investigation. He lived close to where Hettrick’s body was found. He had access to the field. He matched witness descriptions of a suspicious man seen in the area. But police had pursued Masters instead, and Hammond was never charged.
Hammond died in 2002, five years before Masters was exonerated. He would never face trial for Peggy Hettrick’s murder, but the DNA evidence confirmed what Masters had said all along. Investigators had arrested the wrong man and ignored the real suspect for years.
The aftermath
The wrongful conviction of Timothy Masters exposed systemic failures in the Fort Collins Police Department’s handling of the case. Critics pointed to tunnel vision, the suppression of exculpatory evidence, and the reliance on psychological profiling based on teenage artwork.
Masters struggled to adjust to life after prison. He had lost his youth, his freedom, and nearly a decade of his life. The settlement provided financial compensation, but it couldn’t restore what had been taken.
Peggy Hettrick’s family was left with the knowledge that her real killer had lived freely for years while an innocent man sat in prison. The case became a cautionary tale about the dangers of confirmation bias in criminal investigations and the devastating consequences of wrongful convictions.
Fort Collins reformed some of its investigative practices in the wake of the scandal, but the damage had been done. The case remains a stark reminder of how easily the system can fail when investigators prioritize building a case over finding the truth.
Where to dive deeper
- Documentary: “Drawing Evil” (Investigation Discovery)
- Book: “Drawn to Injustice: The Wrongful Conviction of Timothy Masters” by Patricia Calhoun and Steve Jackson
- Podcast: “The Timothy Masters Case” (“Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom”, Lava for Good)
