On a freezing February morning in 1987, a 15-year-old kid named Tim Masters was walking to his school bus stop in Fort Collins. He saw something in the brush. It looked like a mannequin—one of those weird pranks high schoolers pull. He didn't stop. He didn't call the cops. He just went to class.
That "mannequin" was the mutilated body of 37-year-old Peggy Hettrick.
Because Tim didn't report it immediately, the police decided right then and there that he was their man. It didn't matter that there was no blood on his clothes. It didn't matter that he had no motive. They spent the next decade trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, eventually using a teenager's angsty, violent drawings to put a man in prison for life.
Honestly, the Tim Masters and Peggy Hettrick story is one of the most frustrating examples of "tunnel vision" in American legal history. It’s a case where investigators ignored actual physical evidence because they were too busy playing amateur psychologist with a kid’s sketchbook.
The Morning Everything Changed
Peggy Hettrick had been out at a local bar called the Prime Minister the night before. She was last seen walking away in the early hours of February 11. When her body was found, the scene was horrific. She had been stabbed in the back, but the "signature" of the crime was the surgical precision of the mutilation.
The killer had performed a partial vulvectomy and removed a nipple.
The coroner at the time, Dr. James Wilkerson, noted that the cuts were remarkably clean. They looked like they were done by someone with medical training or, at the very least, high-quality surgical tools.
So, what did the Fort Collins police do? They searched the bedroom of 15-year-old Tim Masters. They found 2,200 pages of drawings and stories. Tim was a kid who liked horror movies and Rambo. He drew pictures of soldiers, knives, and gore.
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To Detective Jim Broderick, these weren't just the scribblings of a lonely kid. They were a "blueprint" for murder.
A Conviction Built on Ink and Paper
For over ten years, the case sat cold. Tim grew up, joined the Navy, and started a life. But the police never stopped watching him. In 1998, they finally arrested him.
The trial was basically a character assassination.
The prosecution brought in an "expert" named Dr. Reid Meloy. He looked at Tim’s high school drawings and told the jury they proved Tim had a "pre-psychotic" personality. He claimed the drawings were a rehearsal for the murder of Peggy Hettrick.
Think about that for a second. There was:
- No DNA linking Tim to the scene.
- No blood found on his clothes or in his house.
- No witnesses placing him with Peggy.
- No murder weapon found in his possession.
Yet, in 1999, a jury found him guilty. Tim Masters was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He spent nearly a decade in some of Colorado’s toughest prisons for a crime he didn’t commit.
The Evidence They Chose to Ignore
While the police were obsessed with Tim’s drawings, they were sitting on a mountain of evidence that pointed elsewhere.
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For starters, there were two hairs found on Peggy’s body. They didn't match Tim. There were fingerprints in her purse. They didn't match Tim.
Then there was Dr. Richard Hammond.
Hammond was a local eye surgeon who lived right next to the field where Peggy’s body was found. Even weirder? He was later caught secretly filming women’s private areas through a hidden camera in his office bathroom. When police searched his house, they found thousands of hours of footage.
Detectives on the Hammond case actually told the Hettrick investigators, "Hey, you might want to look at this guy. He has the surgical skills, the proximity, and the obsession with female anatomy."
The lead investigators on the Tim Masters and Peggy Hettrick case basically ignored him.
The DNA Breakthrough
Tim’s luck finally changed when his new defense team, led by Linda Wheeler-Holloway (a former investigator who actually believed in his innocence) and attorneys David Wymore and Maria Liu, pushed for advanced DNA testing.
They didn't just want standard testing. They went to the Netherlands to use a technique called "touch DNA."
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In 2008, the results came back. The DNA found on Peggy Hettrick’s clothing did not belong to Tim Masters. It belonged to a man named Matthew Zoellner, Peggy’s boyfriend at the time of her death.
Now, to be clear, Zoellner has never been charged and has always denied involvement. But the presence of his DNA—and the absolute absence of Tim’s—was enough to blow the case wide open.
The Exoneration
In January 2008, Tim’s conviction was vacated. He walked out of the courtroom a free man, though it took until 2011 for the Colorado Attorney General to officially exonerate him and declare him "no longer a suspect."
The fallout was massive:
- A $10 million settlement: Tim received $4.1 million from the city of Fort Collins and $5.9 million from Larimer County.
- Censures: The two lead prosecutors in the original trial were later publicly censured for withholding evidence that could have helped Tim’s defense.
- Perjury Charges: Detective Jim Broderick was actually charged with perjury in 2010, though the charges were eventually dropped due to the statute of limitations.
Why This Case Still Matters in 2026
The Tim Masters and Peggy Hettrick tragedy changed how Colorado handles criminal justice. It led to the creation of the "Tim Masters Bill," which requires better preservation of DNA evidence. It also served as a massive warning about the dangers of "junk science" in the courtroom—specifically the use of psychological profiling to replace physical evidence.
Honestly, the saddest part is that Peggy Hettrick's murder is still technically unsolved. While Tim got his life back, Peggy’s family never got real justice.
If you're following this case, the big takeaway isn't just about a "wrongful conviction." It's about how easily a narrative can replace the truth when people in power decide they've already found the villain.
Actionable Next Steps for True Crime Followers
If you want to dive deeper into the mechanics of how this happened or support reform, here is what you can do:
- Read "Drawn to Injustice": This is Tim Masters' own book. It’s raw, and it gives a perspective on prison life that you don’t get from the news clips.
- Support the Innocence Project: They were instrumental in the DNA work here. They track similar cases where "behavioral evidence" is used to override a lack of physical proof.
- Review Local Evidence Laws: Check your own state's laws on evidence preservation. Many states still don't have the mandatory 25-year or life-of-sentence preservation rules that Colorado adopted because of Tim.
- Watch the 48 Hours Specials: They did extensive reporting on the "mannequin" defense and the surgical links that were ignored. It’s a masterclass in seeing how investigators can develop "blind spots."
The case remains a cold case in the files of the Colorado Attorney General. If you have any legitimate information regarding the 1987 death of Peggy Hettrick, you can still contact the Larimer County Cold Case unit.