After A Decade In Prison, The Man Convicted Of Peggy Hettrick's Murder Was Exonerated. So Who Is The Real Killer?

Peggy Hettrick

She was a artistic, vivacious, fun-loving red head. She had a lot of ambitions, one of those was a novel, a fiction piece about diamond smugglers, that she was writing on her typewriter.

In 1987, Peggy was 37 years old and working at the Fashion Bar, a department store that sold ladies’ and men’s apparel at The Square at the corner of College Avenue and Horsetooth Road, in Fort Collins, Colorado.

On February 10th, 1987, Peggy finished her shift at work and clocked out at 9:01 p.m. She did not own a car so she walked the few blocks to her Aspen Leaf apartment on Stover Street. Once there she realized she was locked out. Peggy banged on the door, but her friend, who was staying with her, was passed out drunk inside and would not answer. Peggy went bar hopping briefly while she was locked out. Peggy then walked back to her residence, changed clothes and headed back out. 

Peggy had spent the rest of the night at the Prime Minster Bar at the corner of College Avenue and Boardwalk Drive. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Matt Zoellner, claimed he arrived at the Prime Minister at about 12:30 a.m. and bumped into Peggy while he was waiting for another woman. He offered Peggy a ride back to her apartment. She said OK, but after Zoellner returned from the bathroom, he said, he saw her walking out the door.

The next morning, Peggy’s grandmother arrived at her apartment. The two had planned to go out to breakfast and do some shopping. Peggy was not there. The light was still on in her bedroom.

That same morning, roughly six hours after Peggy was seen leaving the bar, a bicyclist on his way to work saw what he thought was a mannequin in an open field at the 3500 block of Landings Drive, less than 500 yards from the Prime Minister. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't a mannequin at all, it was Peggy's dead body. 

The police were called and they descended on the scene. A half-smoked cigarette sat in a pool of blood that had gathered at the nearby curb and a bloody drag trail headed from it into the field.  This lead investigators to believe that Peggy had been dragged from another location, perhaps a car parked by the road.

Peggy had been stabbed once in the back and had cut marks on her face, pelvis and breasts. Her arms were up above her head. Her purse was twisted around her arm and her watch was still on her wrist. Around her neck there was a gold chain necklace with a gold charm of the Blessed Mother. All her jewelry seemed to be all in place and her nails were perfectly manicured with pink polish. 

Investigators believed that this was a sexual homicide and the killer had put Peggy on display. They also theorized that he had a lot of skill with a knife due to the partial vulvectomy that had been performed.

With bare hands, casts were taken of tire tracks and footprints. Photographs were snapped and any evidence that could be found was collected.

Meanwhile, investigators canvased the neighborhood. Their first stop was a trailer that belonged to a man named Clyde Mathews. The trailer sat at the top of a small hill overlooking the field where the body was discovered. Clyde's 15-year-old son Tim also lived there. Clyde told police that he'd seen his son deviate from his usual path across the field to the bus that morning.

At the time, Tim was a five-foot-ten, 120-pound high school sophomore at Fort Collins High School. The other kids called him “Toothpick.” He was awkward, introverted, and an outcast. 

Tim grew up just outside San Diego. His father, a Vietnam veteran, was stationed there as a chief petty officer with the U.S. Navy. When Tim was in second grade, the family moved to Fort Collins. They settled into the trailer while Clyde finished his last few years in the service in California. The transition was tough for Tim, he seemed isolated and withdrawn. Even though he had above average intelligence, he had problems in school and counseling was suggested.

Tim's dad retired in 1982 and moved to Fort Collins. Things seemed to be getting better until February 11th, 1983. Tim was in sixth grade and his mother was not feeling well. Clyde drove her to the hospital and Margaret Masters died of toxic shock syndrome the next day.

Clyde Masters, was still grieving the loss of his wife and would often take out his anger by yelling at Tim. During this time, Tim was busted twice: once for shoplifting some toy cars from Target, and once for vandalism. A middle school counselor, Ann Livingston, told investigators that Tim was shy and that he was not doing well in school. “He appeared to miss his mom,” she said.

Tim often withdrew into his drawing. The pictures were mostly about monsters or war, often grotesque and showing a lot of blood. “He was very interested in the armed forces,” Livingston told police, “and was very enthusiastic whenever his sister came home for visits.”

During his first semester of 10th grade, teachers did notice a preoccupation with racism and cruelty, weapons, militarism, and death. And a few weeks before Peggy's killing, a teacher tried to confiscate an Army manual Tim was reading in class. Furious, he refused to hand it over and stormed out of the classroom.

When police pulled Tim out of class for questioning, he admitted that he had saw the body on his way to school, but he thought it was a mannequin and someone was playing a trick. However, he allegedly told a classmate that he first thought that it was just a mannequin in the field that morning, but when he got closer he saw that it was really a dead body. 

He even drew his classmate a map of where he found the body.

On February 12th, Tim was brought into the police station. Investigators asked him if they could question him alone and he agreed. That also garnered his father's permission as well. After 6 hours of interrogation, wherein policemen repeatedly told Tim they knew he'd committed the murder, Tim maintained his innocence. He was then administered a lie detector test, which he failed.

Later that day, investigators searched his home, including the sinks for blood, and his school locker. What stood out first to detectives was a knife collection displayed on his dresser. Next to the knives was the local newspaper with the account of the body's discovery. 

Investigators also found 2,200 pages of writings and violent artwork in his bedroom, backpack and school locker, along with pornography. 

The coroners report stated that Peggy had been killed by two knives. One knife was supposedly like a scalpel for mutilation and a bigger knife was used for killing. Two hairs were found on Peggy along with unknown fingerprints on her purse. The knives could not be linked to Peggy's murder. No trace of Peggy's blood or hair was found in Tim's room or among his belongings, including his clothes and knife collection. Also, the hairs found on Peggy, along with the unknown fingerprints on her purse, did not match Tim either.

On February 12th, 1988, desperate to get some kind of criminal reaction out of Tim, investigators planted an article containing false information in the local newspaper, but it didn't work.

In 1992, an interview with a former classmate revealed that Tim told his friends details about the sexual mutilations. The investigators thought this information had never been made public or disclosed to Tim or his defense attorneys. Convinced that only the murderer would have known those details, Tim was interviewed again. Investigators traveled to Philadelphia, where Time was serving in the Navy. He told investigators that a friend in his art class had told him about the mutilations. The friend had been part of a group of Explorer Scouts helping the police search the crime scene, and he was told of the nature of the mutilations early in the investigation. Allegedly, his story checked out.

In 1996, Dr. J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist from California,  analyzed Tim's writings and artwork extensively. He concluded that some of the drawings represented Tim reliving the crime.

August 10th, 1998, detectives went to Tim's house with an arrest warrant and he was brought to Fort Collins for trial.

In March of 1999, based on the testimony of Dr. Meloy and others, and Tim's own drawings, including a drawing of a body being dragged, Tim was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for Peggy's murder. Though some jurors had doubts about his guilt, his drawings and writings were cited by jury members as compelling evidence against him.

After mounting several appeals, the state appointed a new defense team who immediately began investigating the case. The defense team discovered that evidence, including the hairs found on Peggy and photographs of the fingerprints found in her purse, was missing. During 2007 hearings, the defense alleged police and prosecutorial misconduct in the investigation and trial. The defense argued that Jim Broderick perjured himself during the 1999 trial concerning his involvement in the case. Also, it was alleged that  prosecutors withheld evidence, DNA test results of skin cells left on Peggy's clothing pointed to Peggy’s on-again-off-again boyfriend, Dr. Richard Hammond.

In 1987, Hammond was an eye surgeon in Fort Collins. He was a 98-pound weakling. He wore thick glasses since he was 3 years old and he grew up to be a bookworm with splayed feet who had no athletic acumen whatsoever. He was quiet and gentle and kind of a wimp, until he started body building. His house was close to where Peggy's body was found, which you could see from the upstairs bedroom and bathroom. And he was home the morning after the murder, despite his usually scheduled surgeries on that day of the week. 

In April 1987, a block from where Peggy’s body was found, a man that was described as square-jawed, muscular and in his mid-20's flashed a woman. In 2011, the victim in that case looked at a picture of Hammond and said he looked like the flashing suspect.

Beginning around 1992, Hammond rigged an elaborate videotaping operation that would secretly film the genitals of females who used the toilet in his home’s downstairs bathroom. He created hundreds of videotapes; many images were extreme close-ups of genitals.  His victims ranged in age from early teens to mid 40's, and included friends of his children and his wife, babysitters and house sitters. Hammond was arrested in 1995 after a house sitter discovered the elaborate setup. 

Investigators search his house and found the rigging and thousands of dollars worth of pornography hidden in a locked office and in a storage shed in town. 

Hammond committed suicide in March 1995 at a La Quinta Motor Inn in north Denver. He had used an IV needle containing cyanide.  "My death should satisfy the media's thirst for blood," he wrote in the suicide note.

Though investigators noted a possible link between Hammond and the Peggy's murder, no follow up investigation was done. Since he had committed suicide and therefore he couldn't be tried for anything, Broderick ordered evidence in the Hammond case destroyed before it could be examined for any link with Peggy. The information about the arrest of Dr. Hammond, and his subsequent suicide, was withheld from Dr. Meloy and the other experts, and the FBI was not informed of this case.

A judge vacated Tim's conviction and he was released after a decade in prison in 2008. Wearing a black suit, white button-down shirt, and yellow-print tie, he walked out of the Larimer County courtroom unchained.

The DNA testing that led to the 2008 overturning of Tim's conviction also implicated Peggy's sometime boyfriend, Matt Zoellner, a young used car salesman, who liked pretty women, cold beer, and cocaine. He also had testified at Tim's trial. DNA found inside the waistband of Peggy's panty lines and under the cuffs of her blouse matched Zoellner’s profile.  Zoellner was initially a suspect in 1987, but was quickly ruled out. Officials plan to renew the investigation.

Following his release, Tim filed a civil case, and the city and county agreed to a settlement that paid Masters and his attorneys $10 million. Then, in November 2010, the residents of Larimer County voted overwhelmingly to kick Judges Gilmore and Blair off the bench.

In an announcement on June 28th, 2011, it was announced that Tim was no longer a suspect in Peggy's murder a was exonerated.

To this date, no one has been charged in Peggy's murder.