Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Peggy Hettrick Part 1

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

When Peggy Hettrick’s body was found in an open field in Fort Collins, Colorado, police rushed to the nearest suspect. But clues left behind on Peggy’s body later turn the case upside down, leaving justice undone and multiple victims in the wake of a sloppy investigation. Join us in asking the Colorado Attorney General to reopen Peggy’s case, assign a new investigator and explore new DNA testing by following this link.  Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-peggy-hettrick-part-1/Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.The Crime Junkie Merch Store is NOW OPEN! Shop the exclusive Life Rule #10 Tour collection before it’s gone for good! Don’t miss your chance - visit the store now! Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Today's special episode of Crime Junkie is presented by State Farm. Life's full of ups and downs, but there's one thing that stays consistent. State Farm's commitment to being there when you need them most. You know the saying, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Whether it's helping you file a claim or providing the right coverage for your home, car, or anything in between, State Farm makes it easy to protect what matters. You can talk to one of their agents face to face over the phone or get the same level of service with their app.

You don't have to be an expert in insurance. You just need to know you've got someone looking out for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Hi Crime Junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And we are officially back from tour. It has been a long couple of months on the road. But so much fun. So much fun to see all of you guys. And if you were one of the, you know, 75,000 of our closest friends who came out to see us, you'll know that the story we covered is super important and super timely and has

like one of like the most active call to actions that we've had in a long time, which is why if you went on tour, you're gonna recognize this story. We are bringing everyone this story, because we need everyone's ears. And because we're bringing everyone the story, I also wanted to give everyone who couldn't make it on tour the opportunity to get some merch from our tour. Like, that line every time was like out the door. We started late sometimes because of it.

Hours long line, you guys are amazing, but you guys can have your chance for like another week or so to go to crimejunkiepodcast.com and snag your tour merch as well. And don't wait too long, because once it's gone, it is gone. So let me jump in, because I want to share with everyone the story that had like thousands of people at a time

doing like collective gasps. And I mean, I feel like people laughed, they cried. It was, it's an incredible story. It's a story that needs attention. Please listen all the way to the end because we need your help. This is the story of Peggy Hetrick. Music How could this have happened to us? But you know, over the years, I see so many people losing loved ones. And the one question that keeps coming back to me is, if we had done something different, if we'd stayed in Hawaii, if we'd stayed in Spain, this would have never happened.

Why did this happen? What brought us here to this place for this to happen? There's so many multiple universes, you know, we could have stayed here, stayed there, moved to Florida earlier, and she would have been alive today. But it didn't happen that way. Why? I don't know. I don't know. But I wish we would have

done some things differently. Yeah. In my lifetime now, it's been 30 some years since Peggy's gone and still nothing has been done about it. And it's like everybody just wants to turn a blind eye to it and move on. What? Move on? I've got stage four colon cancer.

I'm doing all right right now, but my doctor has told me, and she was very blunt about it, she said, you know that this is going to kill you. And I said, yeah, I know that. I understand that. So that's why I agreed to do this interview, because I may not be around before this comes to a conclusion.

But I'd like to see it start. I'd like to see them get busy and do their job and give Peggy resolution. Maybe me, maybe I'll still be around, I don't know, but I'll try, try to be around. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of anything anymore. I can't be. I have to be strong. And if we can do something for Peg and her memory,

then let's get it done now. All right, the man you just heard speaking was Tom Hetrick. And his sister Peggy Hetrick was murdered in Fort Collins, Colorado, back in 1987. And the thing is, there is still plenty that can be done to solve this case. The problem is the people who are in charge right now, who have the case, aren't doing

what needs to be done to solve it. But our crime junkies know what helps with that, right? A little bit of pressure. And a lot of noise. And so the reason we went on tour, the reason we're bringing this story again is we want to tell people why they should be making noise, why they should be straight up mad.

Not just on behalf of Tom and Peggy, but so many people in our story. And it's a story that starts on February 11th, 1987. That's when a guy named Woody is bicycling to work. It's like 7 a.m. and even though it's February in Fort Collins, Colorado, like there's no snow on the ground, but it's cold. So I imagine he's just like head down, like pedaling, kind of in the zone where you like, you know, zone out a little bit.

But then something catches his attention in this field. And when he looks down, he sees this splash of red, but he realizes it's not just red, this is blood. And so, forget work, he has to call police, and when they show up, there is this 100-foot long trail of blood from that splash of blood by the curb all the way to the middle of the field.

And that's where they find the body of a woman. Now she's laying face up, her arms are over her head, her bra and her shirt have been pulled up, her pants and her underwear have been pulled down, and they can't see like what's causing the blood. They suspect that she has some kind of wound to her back, but they won't know at the moment. What they can see is that one of her nipples has been removed, but everything else is still on her. I mean, her clothes, she's still got her purse slung over her shoulder and everything is inside it, including her checkbook, which is how they realize

she's 37-year-old Peggy Hetrick. Now by 9 a.m., this field is a frenzy with officers. One of the people on the scene that day, Sergeant Ray Martinez, he said when he showed up, he was surprised to see basically all of Fort Collins Police Department there on the scene. He's like, this was an all hands on deck situation. The problem is in 1987, hands on deck situation, the problem is in 1987, not all of those hands were gloved. But when they actually touch her and turn her over, they see that they were correct. There's a wound to her back, a stab wound on her upper back that was causing the bleeding. And they also see that she has like grass and debris on her butt, which they start forming

this kind of theory based around what they're seeing. Because if you follow that blood trail all the way back to the curb, what they see are some critical things. So they see a set of footprints, not Peggy's footprints, by this pool. And then they also see a cigarette butt in the pool of blood. And Peggy was a known smoker. So they start to wonder maybe she was like walking, got surprise attacked from behind, like she's walking and smoking, she drops the cigarette and her attacker

pulled down her pants and then drug her and they're thinking that because of the grass and stuff found on her butt. They're also thinking that because there was not just the bloody drag mark, but there was also this trail where you could tell that something was drug in the dirt and they suspected that it was her shoes. And I was literally, at one point, you saw me dragging people across the audio track office. And the only way that makes sense is,

because normally if you drag someone- Your feet kind of splay out into a V. Exactly. So I think the reason they're thinking this is like, she had to have had her pants down first, not because of the grass, but also because to make these marks. The shoes were like together.

Right. The problem I have with this is, is there's something that doesn't make sense to me. If they're dragging her and she's bleeding and her shoes are making this trail, those should line up. But the drag marks and the blood trail are actually very different. And at one point they even cross each other, which nobody can seem to really make sense

of. I mean, I've heard some people theorize, well, maybe there's two people. And what if one of them had her coat and the coat was bloody? My problem with that is like, her coat isn't just on her, it's on her with her purse still over her shoulder. Like no one like undressed her and then redressed her that much.

And it's also not the coat that's actively bleeding. You know what I mean? Like the blood is coming from her and for it to make a 100 foot long trail, it just doesn't add up. And maybe it's a red herring or we're not understanding what those are, because the other thing I noticed is that Peggy's shoes

don't seem really dirty in the photos that I have. And not that it was muddy or anything like that. But there should still be like dust and pieces of grass. I mean, there's debris on her body, on her butt. Right, so the question is, how did she get out there in the middle of that field? And the other critical question is who wore men's Tom McCann dress shoes size eight and a half or nine?

Cause that's what they determined those like critical footprints by the blood pool were. And the blood there by the curb and the trail, that's from the stab wound, not the mutilation, right? Like active bleeding. Yes. So when they do an autopsy, they realize that her nipple being removed, that was done post-mortem.

So after she was already deceased, that wouldn't have been bleeding. The other thing they determined at the autopsy is she was also mutilated elsewhere. So she had genital mutilation as well. And her nipple being removed, the ME notes that that was done with surgical precision. And they said it was done with a small sharp instrument, something like a scalpel almost,

which was different than what was used to stab her because they determined that that was a knife that had a five inch serrated blade. But they don't find either of those weapons in the field. And you know what else they don't find? Her nipple. But they're like, don't worry, we know exactly who to call to find it. The Scouts. So kids? Like fully children. And Britt, when I first heard this, my initial reaction when I read this was like, you mean

to tell me that in my childhood, they had me out there selling friggin thin mints when I could have been like looking for evidence like I would have been an eagle scout. 100%. Yeah, that was not a badge I could have. But this is where I'm introducing a new crime junkie life role. Always go a layer deeper. Once I dug, it wasn't the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts that were out there looking for body parts.

It was actually something called the Explorer Scouts. But still kids. Oh, that's still fully like high school kids. And if you don't know, this is also like a quick PSA to my Crime Junkies. I am trying to put together an episode for the near future about the Explorer program. I'm not saying like pull your kids out if you have kids in it. I'm just saying pay attention, get involved.

Ask some questions. I have found there is a lot of abuse that happens in that program. So quick PSA, future episode to come, hit me up if you have a story. But anyways, kids are out there looking for nipples, which they don't find, and the police are looking for a perp. And they decide that to find this person,

the first thing they need to do is they need to get to know Peggy, they need to understand her last movements. So they start by going to her apartment. And they learn that she had a temporary roommate at the time named Sharon. And temporary is important because that night, when Peggy got off work at around 9 p.m.

from the fashion bar and she walked home, it wasn't far away, she found herself locked out of the apartment because they were sharing keys. And she's like banging on the door. And Sharon is either out drinking and forgot to get home in time to let her in, or she got home, but because she'd been out drinking, she was like home passed out.

Either way, Peggy's banging, banging, banging, can't get inside, so making the best of like a mess situation, she decides to go kind of bop around to a couple local bars. She has a drink, she's using the payphone trying to like call home and wake Sharon up. By around midnight, she decides to head back, again banging on the door, and this time Sharon is there. She lets her in. But Peggy is not staying in for the night. She's there to do a little change of clothes,

get out of her work clothes, change into jeans and a blouse or like jeans and a going out top for my millennials. And she goes back out. She goes to this place called the Prime Minister, also within walking distance. And this was a regular haunt for Peggy. So it's not surprising that she runs into somebody she knows, her on again, off again, currently off boyfriend, Matt Zollner.

Now, Matt was actually there at the bar that night with another woman, someone he had just met that evening, like didn't even remember her name. It was like maybe Sean. He said though he saw Peggy and they chatted for a little bit. He even offered her a ride when he realized that she'd walked and she originally accepted, but he like went to the bathroom when he came out. She was leaving alone.

And so he figured maybe she just changed her mind or whatever. And so he said him and maybe Sean, they stayed till last call. Then maybe Sean went home with them. She stayed with him till like three or three thirty. And other people back this up. The bartender at Prime Minister saw Peggy leaving alone at 1.15 in the morning, and maybe Sean backs up that she was with Matt till last call, then back at his place till 3.30. So this is the last time Peggy is seen, 1.15 in the morning, leaving the Prime Minister

alone. And this does kind of work with their theory because if you were to look at a map, which we'll have on the website, if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm sure it's popped up, the field where Peggy's body was found is kind of in between the prime minister and her apartment. So this- So she was walking home.

Yeah, smoking a cigarette, surprise, like everything's still kind of fitting. So the question is, who would be in this field, this like empty field, in the early morning hours? Now, they had done an initial canvas and nobody in the area had seen or heard anything. But one detective, Linda Wheeler, she decides she wants to just go knocking on doors again,

starting with the people like absolutely closest to the crime scene. And the closest trailer is like 200 yards away and it belongs to a guy named Clyde Masters. So they go knocking on his door and Clyde says the same thing, didn't see or hear anything. But he says, you know, come to think of it, my son, 15 year old Tim, he lives with him in the trailer

and he cuts through that field every morning to get to the school bus. And he says, you know, on that morning that you found that woman, he hesitated in the field a little bit. Like didn't do anything, wasn't there long? I mean, he still made it to the school bus on time, but he says, you know, knowing what you found,

maybe it's just kind of weird. And police think it's weird too, because they find out that Tim would have been going through that field at about 7 a.m. Which is almost the same time that Woody ends up finding Peggy. Woody's the guy on the bicycle. So they're like, we know Peggy's there. If you saw her there, why wouldn't you say something? Why would you go on to school like nothing happened unless you were involved? So they go right to the school, they pull Tim out of class, and right away,

before they say a word, he knows exactly why they're there. But he told investigators then the same thing that he told us when we interviewed him so many years later. So February 11th, 1987, I woke up at a normal time, I think it was somewhere around 6 o'clock. I still remember my father had fixed sausage and eggs for breakfast that day. So I had sausage and eggs for breakfast, took a shower, got dressed. I typically wore a t-shirt, jeans, and a jean jacket. And about 6.55, I walked out the back door to head through the field to go catch my bus.

And I remember, I still remember to this day, when I was getting close, we had a little fence halfway across the property line. Like not at the edge of my property, but about halfway between the trailer and the edge of the property. And I remember seeing, at that time of day, it looked like there was trash out in the field.

I thought somebody had dumped some trash out in the field. That's what it looked like. And I remember thinking, man, this kind of crap never used to happen before these roads went in. Now people are dumping trash in the fields. And I walked on and went through the fence onto the field north of my house. And I remember seeing it started to look more like

a body out there. And I remember seeing it look like someone had spray painted brown paint on the ground, reddish brown paint, like a rust color along the field going out to it. And I remember walking my normal path and then I veered over to go look and see what the hell was in the field. And I walked over towards it,

stood there and looked at it. And to a 15 year old me, I think I was in such a state of shock that I couldn't believe that was a body. I thought it was a mannequin, specifically a Rissessa Annie doll, that someone had stolen from the school and dropped out in the field as a prank. I remember walking away kind of confused about it, thinking, no, there's no way it's a body. Somebody dropped a mannequin out there.

And I walked on, caught my school bus, and I didn't say anything to anybody about it. All right. First of all, we called it the life rule number 10 tour for a reason. Everyone knows it. It's never a mannequin. It's never a mannequin. But there are a couple of things to keep in mind. So, number one, this is 1987, right?

This is the year before you and I were even born. No crime junkie, no crime junkie life rules. Exactly. And he didn't just say it was a mannequin. He specifically said he thought it was a Ressessa Annie doll like he has in his school. Now, I don't know if anyone listening knows what a Ressessa Annie doll is. They probably know, they definitely know if they came to tour. You probably know if you follow me on Instagram. I didn't know when this whole thing started. So I ordered one on eBay. Yes, you did. She has been living in the office.

She's like become my friend. And she's been on the road with us. She has, she's been everywhere. And he's like my emotional support, like through tour. They're basically like these, like the body blows up, but like the head, the feet and the arms are like solid. It's very strange, very lifelike and not just lifelike, but like the head, the feet and the arms are like solid. It's very strange, very lifelike, and not just lifelike, but like deceased-like.

Well, it's a CPR doll. Yeah, and what's so wild is I have this picture that I'm not going to share of Peggy's face as she's lying in the field, and this Rossella Annie doll side by side. The way Peggy is pale, her haircut, color, style, everything is identical. And I've showed a couple of people on the production team and I'll try, I explain it the same way I'm explaining it now and people are like, okay, yeah,

sure, I kinda, I maybe understand it. And if I show people the picture, it's always just, I showed you, it's just a gas. Yeah, it's shocking. It's uncanny, I showed you, it's just a gasp. Yeah, it's shocking, it's uncanny. It is. So if you're 15 and you're used to seeing that at your school all the time, you don't believe that you're walking to school

and gonna find a dead body. Like that's just not your reality. Your mind just like fills in the blank. Exactly. So you have that. And then the other thing is, again, a grown man told us the story when we went to go speak with him.

But like I said, he was a 15 year old kid when this happened. But it doesn't matter. None of that stuff matters. Police do not believe that he could have seen Peggy and thought she was a recessive antedal, a mannequin, whatever. So they bring him in for questioning, which his dad okays. Tim's by himself during this. And the whole time he is insistent. He had nothing to do with this. But when they give him a polygraph, that says otherwise. Which that's another life role. Never take a polygraph. And we have another one. Always get a lawyer. But Tim said that he and his dad didn't know

that they could get a lawyer or should get a lawyer at the time. And Tim also didn't realize that they were searching his trailer, paying specific attention to his room, where they were finding things like toy guns, a knife collection, and they're still looking for a murder weapon at this time. They also found a pair of pants with a spot of blood on them.

And they found this next thing that they think is the clincher, like they're proof that they're onto a dangerous individual. They find a bunch of Tim's drawings. Crime junkies, if you are like me, you have found yourself glued to the TV screen, of Tim's drawings. Crime Junkies, if you are like me, you have found yourself glued to the TV screen, captivated by the twists and turns of a gripping true crime story. Now imagine having endless access to all your favorite true crime shows completely free.

You can watch all your favorite true crime shows for free on Pluto TV. Follow along as mysteries unfold and secrets get uncovered with classics like 48 Hours, Dateline 24-7, and Forensic Files. These iconic shows are always available, so you never have to miss a moment of the action. Still craving more crime stories? Dive into thrilling crime dramas like Tracker and CSI. With Pluto TV, you have access to all I've been working on for a while now. I've been working on a new video called The New Video. And I've been working on a new video called The New Video.

And I've been working on a new video called The New Video. And I've been working on a new video called The New Video. And I've been working on a new video called The New Video. And I've been working on a new video called The New Video.

And I've been working on a new video called The New Video. And I've been working on a new video called The New Video. And I've been working on a new video called So why wait? Start streaming now. No subscription required. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never. Now this is where you will want to be watching on YouTube. If you're not watching this episode on YouTube, we're going to post the pictures on the website and in the app for those listening there. The drawings become central to this case. And like I've seen these drawings so many times, Ashley. And they're violent. Like there's one with like, it looks like a,

they're all hand drawn. One's like holding a head with like a gun behind it. Some of them have like machete, like knives and like stabs. There's also things that are like military patches and there's homework in the middle of one of the drawings. Yes. And this was, when we went on tour, this was, we would we would show the drawings and I don't want to downplay it. People would do this collective gasp where they were like-

More than we even thought they would. Yeah. They were shocked by them. What I kept saying on tour is like, I remember, middle school does not feel that far away. I don't want to do the math because it is that far away, but I remember the boys in my class doing these weird drawings. Well, and I told you, my son's in high school now. He was in middle school and he also drew weird things. I showed you some of his drawings. It was like a cat god, a scepter, but it's also on algebra homework. It all felt very benign to me. Right. But it did not feel benign to these investigators. So as they're finding this stuff,

they're sharing it with the cops interrogating Tim. And they take turns interrogating him alone over the course of nine hours. What you think about all this? What you think about the people that, tell me what's going on in here all day since I haven't been here? hours. of killing women don't you? Pictures you've drawn? I do. Not just women. Huh? Not just women. Not just women, but you do have pictures of women being killed don't you?

Yeah, I guess I do, so... But you know, you have all those knives and stuff, don't you do anything with your knives anymore? I like to put knives. What else do you do with them? I don't do much with anything. You just black them? I use them when I go hiking and stuff. What do you do with them? I don't do much for anything. You just black them? I usually want to go hiking and stuff. What do you use them for?

Like I cut wood and stuff. I want to clear this up. In your mind, it's important you tell the truth. I have told the truth. Can you dig what I'm saying? Yeah. She has lost her life. She has no more freedom.

She can't do a thing. Her life is ended. You scared a lot of people. You scared me. I didn't sleep last night. I slept about two hours. You scared the hell out of me. Thank God we found you.

Half the detectives, half my my people lost other sleep last night. We're trying to find you. Now, in all that time, Tim never confessed, never admitted anything, which in and of itself, I think it's kind of a miracle. Like we've seen people crumble under less pressure who are grown adults. Right. But Tim never caves. He swears he had nothing to do with this. And all they have are these drawings, which make them,

like, sure that something is up, but they can't arrest him for drawings. So they have to release him, but they are convinced that he is still their guy. None more than a man named Detective Jim Broderick. And really, he's looking at a couple of things when he is thinking that Tim is guilty. I mean, first and foremost, the drawings. Second, though, at some point when Tim had been interviewed, it comes out that he knew

that Peggy's nipple had been removed, which to Jim, it's like if you, you know, stayed far away, which is always his story. And thought it was a mannequin. Yeah. How would you know that? The other thing he points to is that Tim's shoe prints were found in the field near Peggy's body. So he knows if he's going to build a case against him, he has to get more.

And so what he does is he has the FBI do a profile, sends them everything about their case, all the stuff they have on Tim drawings, all of it, please do a profile. So they send back their official profile and they're like, no, like this kid is not your guy and you can't say that this kid killed this woman based on some drawings. Now instead of hearing that and then like, you know, casting a wider net or thinking like who should we be looking at right? It's kind of like they go profile or shopping, like, and they don't do another official profile. I don't know if the FBI probably just is like a one and done kind of thing.

I'm sure they're not like, yeah, we'll just redo that for you. The police basically like do a phone a friend and call up this guy in Washington to do an unofficial thing. And they get this memo back and the guy's like, listen, I don't know about all the drawings and stuff, whatever, maybe if, a lot of if, ands, buts, maybes, whatever. But he's like, listen, what I have seen before are cases where a suspect will position their victim

in a way so that they can see them after the crime or maybe even see the crime scene unfold, whatever. And where the master's trailer was did have a direct line of sight to where Peggy was found. So that's enough for Jim Broderick. The takeaway is clear that this kid is dangerous and it is his job, nay his duty to get him off the streets of Fort Collins. So the police don't let up. They are pulling him out of class.

They're telling his teachers that he is a dangerous individual suspected of murder, which obviously doesn't stay with just the teachers. Tim said that at one point, I mean, he would be walking down the hall and kids would go to the other side because they didn't want to walk next to the kids suspected of murder. And he wasn't just getting it at school. It was coming at him from all angles.

I mean, every day for the first month of the investigation, the newspaper would show up at their house and the front page was about Peggy's case, how they had one singular suspect that they were honing in on. But Tim wouldn't break in all that time. And he had answers for a lot of things. So yes, his shoe prints were in the field, but he walks through that field. And his prints were not the critical ones,

those Tom McCann dress shoes. His, the closest it came was like five to seven feet away from Peggy, which is like where he said he was walking and saw her. And he said, yeah, I knew her nipple had been removed, but not because I saw it or did it. A girl in my art class told me about it. Well, and the police had kids out looking for the nipple.

Kids talk. Yes, the blood that they found on his pants turned out to be his own blood. The knives that they collected from his room, his whole knife collection, none of them could be connected to be the murder weapon. And there were unidentified prints found on Peggy's purse and unidentified hairs found on her, none of which belonged to Tim. So they had no choice, but at some point to cast a wider net, and they would look at some other people, but quickly rule them out.

So it's not surprising that this case cooled off pretty quickly, which was so frustrating for Peggy's family. It's what I found so like revealing, and I see this in a lot of cases, but it was just so clear in this one to me, when someone dies, there's like this 2D version of them that gets left behind, especially when it's, it's you know, back in the 80s or whatever,

it's like you get a couple of lines in a newspaper about who Peggy was. And that's all I had to go off of when I first started looking into this case. And I wanna give our listeners a sense of lines in a newspaper about who Peggy was. And that's all I had to go off of when I first started looking into this case. And I wanna give our listeners a sense of it. So if you would read what was published about her. Police identified her as Peggy Hetrick, 37, college dropout, bar hopper, and aspiring writer who worked at the fashion bar, a nearby clothing store.

Her friends privately worried something horrible would happen to her, given her late night impulses, her jealousies, her appetite for adventure. Sometimes she would head out into the night just to collect details for the book she was writing or to spy on her boyfriend. And that is so far from the Peggy that I've come to know through her brother Tom over the last year and a half. Because that like college dropout who worked at a clothing store, she was brilliant. She had this like college sweetheart named Frank who she was madly in love with. They were planning a future, they were going to get married and have kids. It was going to be a bright future. When I say she's brilliant, I mean, this woman spoke four different languages.

She traveled all over the world. Her family and her lived in other countries. She was writing this novel, but then her life took this hard left turn when Frank, her fiance, like died suddenly and unexpectedly. And then a couple of years later, her mom died. And I think she was probably trying to figure out what this new version of her future looked like.

And so her and her dad and her brother, they moved around a little and kind of bopped all over. They ended up in Hawaii at one point. They all kind of got island fever and eventually decided to come back to the States. And when they did come back, they split up. So her brother and her dad went to Florida and Peggy went to Colorado, probably because like they'd lived there before it felt familiar to her.

And I know that no one sees something like this coming, but there's something about the timing of this that feels especially cruel because just two days before Peggy was murdered, she called her dad and she told him, Dad, I had this dream that I moved to Florida to be with you. Like, I was so happy, I feel like that's where I'm supposed to be. Can I move there to Florida? And her dad said, of course. Like, wherever we are, you are welcome.

Like, that is your home. But Peggy couldn't just drop the phone and go. Like, that's not real life. She had a job. She had an apartment. She had all these things that she would have to wrap up. But fast forward two days, and instead of helping her plan a move, her dad and her brother were now planning her funeral.

You feel like you've fallen into an abyss. One day you have sure footing and things are stable and she's going to be down there and our friends down there were going to find her a job to help her find a job and she was going to live with us and be a bright spot in the house and we'd be a family to an abyss. Like going into the ocean, you can't breathe and you just sink away far away without stopping. And so now your life is changed forever. What do you do? You know? Hopes and desires are, they go

out the window. Now you have to start a new life. And then after that, you know, my dad started to get sick. Now I'm dealing with my dad that is, is dying. Because the doctor pulled me in, he said, your dad maybe has six months. And I just looked at him, I said, what? So Tom and his dad, they ended up moving to Colorado. So Tom could take care of his dad also so they could be close to the investigation, but they weren't really getting a ton of updates. I mean, they kind of just got the party line,

like this is active and ongoing, but that became harder and harder to believe as a lot of time went on. And really hard to believe when out of nowhere, Tom gets this call from someone at the police department who's like, hey, we have a bunch of your sister's stuff. Like if you wanna come get it, we'll probably just get rid of it, like up to you.

Which the only thing police would have that belonged to Peggy is evidence. Fully evidence. But he's like, yeah, well, I mean, we'll take anything you have. So he goes down to the police station. They take him to this like garage across the street where they pull up the doors and they pull out two plastic bags with two paper bags inside and just hand it to him. And when he gets home, him and his family start to like open it up and go through it.

But they realize, I mean, this stuff still has blood spatter on it. So they have this moment where they're like, I'm pretty sure we shouldn't have this. And they kind of try their best they can to package it back up and store it in case, but in case of what? Because nobody comes asking about the evidence. Nobody comes asking about Peggy.

And most of the updates that they're getting are about the evidence. Nobody comes asking about Peggy. And most of the updates that they're getting are from the media, when those even happen few and far between. So it seems like nothing on the surface is happening. And behind the scenes, it's really a lot of the same. Jim Broderick is still convinced that Tim Masters killed Peggy. And in all that time, where it's years now, Tim had been busy growing up. When he was 18, he joined the Navy, just like his dad. And for him, this was

his chance to start over, to like have a clean slate, to not be the kid suspected of murder. Like he could go put his head down, do the work. And that's what he did. Day in, day out, month after month, year after year, all the way up until 1992. I'm told to report to the master at arms first thing in the morning the next day. They're like, well, this is weird. I report to the master at arms office the next day, and the E-4 that's assigned to escort me somewhere

is like, should I put him in handcuffs? They're like, no, no, that's not necessary. I'm going, what the hell? Handcuffs? He takes me over to the Navy Intelligence Office in Philadelphia, and there I'm met by three detectives from Four Collins Police, Hal Dean, Jim Broderick, and Linda Wheeler.

And I proceeded to endure about a day and a half of interrogations. I didn't recognize them right, I didn't know Linda Wheeler. I didn't recognize them until, so Jim Broderick had this habit of wearing like reddish colored deodorant and he had pit stains. And when I saw the pit stains, I recognized him. And so I remember my thought was, what the hell? I can't believe five years later,

I'm still being harassed over this. I didn't have anything to do with this. But I was still under the mindset of, especially, I'm just an E4 in the Navy. I really respected, I really treated authority with respect and Linda Holloway was, she's Linda Willard at the time, Jim Broderick, they were still authority. I still treated with them with respect

and I kept telling myself, they're just doing their job. After the interview with Linda Wheeler, I had put it all behind me. I thought it was over and I thought the Four Collins police knew I didn't do it. So I didn't even think about it. When investigators came out of that meeting with Tim, they were split in their thinking. I don't know what Hal thought, but Linda left thinking, no, like this isn't our guy, we've got this all wrong.

Jim Broderick though, was more convinced than ever. So in 1996, he reopens the investigation and after some time, by golly, he's got it. And so on August 10th, 1998, 27-year-old Tim is at home in California. He's out of the Navy by this point. And he gets this knock on his door. And he gets up to get it. Before he can reach the door, the door is open.

And there is this police officer standing right in front of him. And he said, are you Tim Masters? I said, yeah. He said, you're under arrest. I said, what? What for? And he wouldn't tell me. And he handcuffed me.

And as he's taken me out the door, Jim Broderick meets me there and he goes, you're under arrest for the murder of Peggy Hetrick. And I went, whew, what the hell? You gotta be kidding me. It was a complete shock. It was a shock to everyone. I mean, like, I think people were looking like side to side,

like, wait, what did we miss? What do they have that they didn't have before? What's new, yeah. Well, Tim goes to County to talk to his lawyer and he realizes nothing. What they have are his drawings and a star witness to talk about the drawings. Lieutenant Broderick provided me with approximately

2,200 pages of drawings and narratives produced by this young man before and immediately after the sexual homicide. This is a voluminous amount of material. In my 18 years of doing this kind of work, I have never seen such voluminous productions by a suspect in a sexual homicide. And that tells us that he was preoccupied with sexual violence,

with violence, with sexually sadistic images, with images of domination and degradation of women, and he was also fascinated by knives. After spending six months on the case, I felt I understood the motivations for this homicide and that I had become convinced that Timothy Masters was the individual that had committed this homicide. Reed Malloy, without ever having spoken to Tim in those six months, decided that Tim killed Peggy and specifically that it was a case of displaced matricide.

Which matricide is killing your mom and displaced in this case would mean like Peggy equals Tim's mom? Yes and it's not like Tim hated his mom, he loved his mom, right? Like we haven't talked about his mom though because by the time Peggy was murdered his his mom had been dead for four years. And it was really unexpected, like his mom got sick, his dad was like, I'm gonna take her to the hospital, and then she just never came home. I mean, I think they thought she had the flu or something. Which, as you can imagine, is super traumatic for a young kid,

super formative. And it did happen, her death happened almost like four years to the day of Peggy's murder. So the theory became that Tim was so upset that he became angry with his mom for abandoning him. And he, for some reason, is out there in this field in the wee morning hours. And he sees Peggy walking home and he sees specifically Peggy's red hair, and it triggers him. It reminds him of his mom's red hair, and he lashes out and kills her. Which like is a theory, but if you're watching on YouTube, you can see it. If you're listening on the app, it just popped up.

His mom doesn't have red hair, Ashley? She does not even have red hair. Like, this is what's wild. Her hair looks brown in this picture and no one cares. This is what they go to trial with. They go to trial with the drawings, this expert witness to talk about the drawings, and the defense in all of this, like throughout the trial, only calls one expert witness. Not because they're doing a bad job. Because there's nothing else to like, refute. Right. Their one expert witness is just to refute the drawing stuff. So it feels like there's no case here.

And it feels like everyone can see where this is going. As I was standing there, I was thinking, I'm going home, I'll be going home after today. Yeah. And then the jury came out and I kinda knew something was off. None of the jury would make eye contact with me. Like, oh God.

And then the judge asked, have you reached a verdict? And the four person on the jury says, we have. And they handed it to the judge, and the judge reads it, Tim Astor's you have been found guilty. And so the media at the time described me as being completely emotionless as the verdict is read. It wasn't a lack of emotion, it was complete shock. Like, oh my God, I can't believe this.

I just got convicted of murder. They cuffed me, they took me to the county jail and now I know I'm going to prison. So the judge sentenced me to life in prison with possibility of parole after 40 years. Oh, it was awful. It was like a world ending event. Your life is over.

Over the past year, Brett, we've covered more potential and confirmed wrongful convictions than I think ever before. We've been really fortunate to play some roles in, I mean, like James Rios's exoneration. We just this last year did the $1 million endowment to help start the Indiana branch of the Innocence Project. Because we're realizing that this is happening all the time. And it's not always this obvious as it is in Tim's case, but it is happening and we have to fix it.

And I don't mean you and me sitting here on this couch, like in our studio. I mean, we as in the crime junkie community, you guys listening, you are the jurors, you are the voters, you are the ones in your community making change, making decisions, making things happen. And I know that it can feel so overwhelming. Like anytime there is a big problem and you realize a system is broken, it's like how am I as one person going to fix this?

But it takes one person and you don't have to fix it like overnight, like that's not how stuff happens, right? Like you have to find the one thing that you care about and just take the one next step. And in this one, I mean, to figure out who killed Peggy Hetrick, the thing is Tim's wrongful conviction. And in a weird twist that we don't see very often, even Peggy's family wasn't super sold on the idea that Tim did it. I mean, they sat through the trial, and at the end, they didn't understand a conviction

just based on drawings, but they had this mentality of something that we've said on the show before. Well, there must be something that police know that we don't know. They couldn't have taken him to trial, convicted him on just this. Right, they wouldn't have arrested him just on that. But they could, they would, and they did.

And so Tim gets carted off to Buena Vista Correctional Complex, where every day he wakes up in a cage for a crime he didn't commit. He takes classes, he works out, he gets a job in prison. All the while, his defense team is filing appeal after appeal. Appeals that are getting denied by the court of appeals, appeals that get denied by the Supreme Court of Colorado. Which we talk about appeals a lot in our episodes, but I think it's easy to forget how expensive it is. It costs money to fight for your life like this.

Exactly, which is why at some point, Tim no longer even has lawyers, and he's doing more appeals on his own, which if he wasn't optimistic before, I mean, the system took any optimism out of him. But lawyers couldn't get these things through the court system. He's learning how to file an appeal for the first time

at the same time he's trying to learn how to use Microsoft Word. He is less optimistic than ever. And what happened to Tim and what happened to Peggy? I mean, it not only changed Tim's life and Tim's outlook, it changed the lives and outlook of so many people, including Linda Wheeler, one of the early detectives. She saw what happened and she was so upset by it because not only did she believe he shouldn't have been convicted in the first place, but then to watch these appeals, these systems we have in place for

checks and balances to not work. She said she did get that feeling I was talking about earlier where it's like, the system is so broken. What am I as one person going to do to help it even on the inside? And she got so discouraged that she ended up turning in her badge. She had a complete career change because she just felt so overwhelmed by it.

But it is just one person that changes everything in this case. And this is my like shout to crime junkies because it's not an FBI agent. It's not a detective. It's not anyone with a badge or a lawyer. It is a random CPA named Taylor Maris, who is just like you and me and everyone listening. One day he was watching this crime show, one of those crime shows we all grew up on. And as he's watching it, he's like, he sees the drawings, right? And he has this moment where he's like,

ooh, like, I too made drawings I wouldn't want the world to see, but like, I'm not a killer. And he said that as he's watching, he kept waiting for that moment for them to, like, show the thing that makes him guilty, makes Tim guilty. Like, what's the piece of evidence? And he's like, I'm waiting, I'm waiting. And then the show ends.

And after it ends, he's like, oh my god, like someone should do something. I should do something. And so he takes just that one next step. He didn't know what to do. But his one next step is he wrote to Tim in prison. And he's like, listen, I see it. Like, how can I help? And Tim's like, man, I don't know, but if there is someone that can help, you have to get Linda Wheeler. Go talk to Linda Wheeler. So Taylor takes the next step and he writes to Linda. He said, you know, you don't know me, but do you remember Tim Masters?

I said, sure. He goes, what do you think you possibly innocent? And I said, yeah, I really do. But what can I do? I'm done. I'm not even a cop anymore. And he said, I, well, he said, I talked with him. Or I just communicated with him by a letter.

And he said, I bought all the transcripts of the trial, $900 worth. But he said, they don't mean anything to me because I don't read legalese. He said, can I send them to you? And for the first time I sat there and read what happened at the trial, and I was infuriated because I knew this case, and I knew the jury had not heard the truth. And at that point, I went, okay, so I contacted Maria Liu, who was Tim's attorney,

and I said, you want my help? They said, yeah. I said, okay. But I know what I had to do is I had to put back on a badge because I knew I wouldn't have any credibility as a civilian. Now as you can imagine, Fort Collins PD is not like welcoming Linda back with open arms. She's telling them they're wrong. Yeah, she's trying to like upend a case that they're like overdone with, it's solved.

Yeah. So she ends up going to work for a DA's office with the understanding that she's gonna work on Tim's case part-time. Now she knows by now a lot of time has passed and if they're going to point the finger at someone else or even just prove Tim didn't do it, the best way to do that is DNA,

something they didn't have access to in 1987, but they do now. And she remembers meeting this woman named Selma at a conference before. And Selma and her husband Richard have this independent lab out in Holland. And independent is key because at this point, they trust frickin' nobody. And so now the wild part is, like they can't just go testing stuff. Like most crime junkies will know this, but if you were wrongfully convicted and you think there's DNA evidence,

you do not have the right to just test it on your own. The prosecution essentially owns the rights to the evidence against you. Yeah, the people who put you there. Now, luckily, there's been enough like suss stuff happening that Fort Collins PD has recused themselves, Larimer County, which stuff happening that Fort Collins PD has recused themselves. Larimer County, which is the DA's office, has recused themselves. So there is a new DA that they're going to have to appeal to, a guy named Don Quick.

And they're hoping like this guy has no dog in the fight other than just wanting justice. So Selma and Richard come to the US, they do this like four hour presentation in front of Don Quick and by the end of it, Don's like, yes, I love you, love the lab, love what you're doing, like go justice. But then guess what happens next? That DNA evidence they were going to send off gets destroyed. And I just want to point out exactly what you said. This happens next. So this evidence destruction happens after they get permission to test it. It's not like, oops, we don't have the evidence anymore.

It's gone. It's, oh, you want it? We're getting rid of it. Which is like, they were already, Tim and his team were already suspicious that something sus was going on and now they're more sure of it than ever. So they do end up finding some stuff that they can send off. At some point, they had gone back to Tom and gotten the

stuff that they gave back to him. They're like, you shouldn't have this. He's like, I know. So they at least collect that. Thank God he saved it. And they end up sending some stuff off for testing. And at the same time, because they're convinced something like very fishy is going on, his lawyers make a request for a new trial based on the accusation that Tim's rights were violated. And they make four important points in this filing. Number one, they say crucial evidence was withheld

from Tim's defense team. And they point to two things. They say specifically the prints, and I think they're talking about the shoe prints in the field, the Tom McCann ones by the pool of blood on the curb. Apparently they never knew, like his defense team never knew that those existed. The second thing that they didn't know existed was that first FBI profile that the police had done that said, Tim is not your guy. Didn't know that that was a thing. That kind of just went away, which would have been really helpful in a trial.

Their second point in this filing was the whole DNA destruction thing. There's that. There's that. And then the third is apparently there was like a mishandling of some skin cell DNA that they had. So some evidence that they had, but you know, not only destroying things and you're mishandling things, like so much is useless. The fourth is that they ignored viable suspects, other viable suspects who were not Tim because make no mistake, they did not just pick Tim out of a void. There were other people that looked a lot more promising than Tim that his defense team never knew about.

And I'm gonna be getting into those people in a moment. But those are their four points. And as they're uncovering all this and filing this, I mean, they found out other things as well. Like the police were basically waging psychological warfare on this kid. So remember how I told you that in the first month of the investigation, the newspaper's showing up every day,

it's like we've got our guy, we're honing in. Turns out that was not real. The Fort Collins police was making a fake front page of the newspaper, just one, putting it on the newspaper and delivering that newspaper to Tim's house. A literal fake news on his doorstep. Mm-hmm. And their whole theory about Mattresside, right, is Tim's like so upset about his mother's

death that it caused all of this. Clearly, they know that he would be upset. They had like his mother's obituary reprinted over and over. They would cut it out, put it in envelopes, and then like leave those envelopes around for Tim to find. And then when that didn't work in like the very like first early days or whatever, come the one-year anniversary of Peggy's murder, they concocted this scheme. Some might call it an operation. I say no. It's a scheme. And a lot of the paper trail of this has been lost along the way, like so much in this case.

But what is left behind is just, it's bizarre. So, Fort Collins authorities basically reached out to the FBI around the one year anniversary and was like, hey, we feel like we have this guy. We can't prove that he's violent, but we feel like if we put him in the right situation, we can push him to be, and other people will see what we see.

But we're afraid that if we push him too far, like, ooh, like he might kill someone again. So we need you watching him. But if it goes too far, you have to pretend like this didn't happen. We didn't do this, you didn't do this, like we all had nothing to do with whatever it is he does. And the FBI is like, got it.

And they're like, yeah, but also if he does nothing and we look dumb. Can't have that happen. Yeah, like pretend it didn't happen. And they're like, got it. And obviously nothing happened, but it just shows you like the mind games they were playing with this, at the time, kid, child, yes. So this request for a new trial gets filed,

the DNA stuff gets sent off, and even now, Tim is still not optimistic. Like everything that can go wrong for him has, why would this be any different? Even when everyone around him is telling him they think it will be. So I'm in the unit. All of a sudden the whole facility locks down for some reason and they lock down a lot. You just assume a fight broke out somewhere, somebody got hurt, whatever. So I'm sitting in my cell and my case manager

comes up while everybody's locked down and he says, Tim, your lawyer just called. She wants you to call her back. Okay, I'm locked down. What am I gonna do? He says, I'll try and get you out here in a minute. So he goes down and he comes back a little bit later. They take me out.

Or no, he goes back down to talk about it and the news comes on and there's an announcement from the special prosecutors in my case and they announce that they're gonna dismiss the case against me and I'll be released on a PR bond. And I'm like, and everybody in the unit was cheering, yeah, you're going home, masters, you're outta here. I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute,

I'm gonna talk to the lawyer later today, we'll find out for sure. Because at this point, I'm so pessimistic, I don't even believe what I just saw on the news. And then I go down to the case manager's office, he calls my lawyer, Maria Lu, and she says, you're outta there, they're letting you go. So, ironically, I made it,

I wasn't in prison for quite 10 years, but I was in there almost 10 years. And, oh man, it was weird. My lawyers bought me a suit out of their own pocket, and I got to wear a suit. They talked the sheriff into letting them release me from the courthouse rather than coming back to the county jail to be processed.

So I went in there and they released me out of the courthouse. That never happens in Colorado. If you get released, you gotta go back to the county jail, wait around while they process you. And they let them release me from the courthouse. My entire family was there. My family was so big that they they couldn't fit in the courtroom and the courtroom was packed anyway with people so they had my family go back in the judges chambers and when the hearing started to release me all my

family started walking out and there was my sister. I almost broke out in tears when I saw my sister. It was a good day. That good day was January 22, 2008. He was let out of prison, charges were dropped, but crime junkies know that doesn't mean he's considered to be innocent, and the DA can refile charges if they want to. Well, they definitely don't want to. At some point, the DNA stuff that they had sent off comes back with a couple of like partial profiles. None of it matches Tim. And the case that they had built,

even the little bit of one they had, is like falling apart, right? Like the people were hiding things, they were lying, like his rights were violated. So by June of 2011, Tim is fully exonerated. And he goes on to sue a lot of the people who helped put him in prison for so long, including Jim Broderick and Jolene Blair and Terry Gilmore. Terry and Jolene were the prosecutors at the time, but by the time Tim is suing them, they were judges. And what I find so interesting is that in this time,

when Jim is being sued or even looked into, he's on paid leave. After two years, he ends up resigning. And even though two grand juries find him guilty of perjury, the charges get dropped. And the judges, at least this is happening during an election year, they don't get re-elected, but they don't get so much as a slap on the wrist. The other big win is for Tim, as he gets to settle for about $10 million, which is great for him. And I keep wondering, like, which is great for him. And I keep wondering, like, why is no one asking who else?

Right. Like, they're not looking in to the prosecutors at the time. And just so you know, like, those three weren't the only ones Tim sued. He sued, like, the city. He sued a lot of people. Those were just like the three main people. But no one is asking if this happened to anyone else. It's like they, you know, they had they paid him out and they just wanted this to go away. Now, obviously, we reached out to Jim Broderick, Jolene Blair, Terry Gilmore for a statement. Didn't hear back from Jim Broderick.

Jolene Blair said she didn't want to talk about the case. Terry Gilmore, actually, for the longest time, we didn't hear back from until like midway through the tour. And what he said was basically that he really believed in Tim's guilt at the time. He said that the way the system worked and the way that like evidence was numbered or copied or whatever, it should have been really obvious if something was missing. And when we asked him what he thought about Tim's guilt or innocence now, he wouldn't tell us. So that's what he has to say.

And in an interesting piece of gossip that has nothing to do with this, obviously when we look up people to try and figure out where they are, we try phone numbers, we try emails. Facebook is a great way to reach people for comment. It turned out now Jim Broderick and Jolene Blair are dating and went to Italy. Like, it's wild. It has nothing to do with this case,

but it's something that we know. What did you know? I know, I know. And I was like, maybe I'm being like a petty Betty, but when I told people on tour, the collective gasp, I was like, oh no, yeah, they're here for the gasp too. So they're living their lives again, no repercussions there. And Tim, all he wanted was to move on and live his life as well. So when he settled his lawsuit,

he moved to have the records in his case sealed. Like he didn't want people bringing this up over and over. Which he deserves that. Absolutely. It does make it really hard when I want to bring this up over and over. She deserves that. Absolutely. It does make it really hard when I want to bring it up, even with Tim's blessing and Tom's blessing and everyone who participated. Luckily, we were able to get some

of the investigative files, though. And those revealed some really interesting things. Because like I said earlier, there were other very viable suspects in this case, far more viable than Tim. And I'm gonna tell you about that in the next episode, which we're gonna be releasing tomorrow. But if you don't wanna wait,

part two is available for you to listen to right now in the Crime Junkie Fan Club, along with another extra surprise way to get the details of this case that we are pretty excited to share with you. You can learn more about the Crime Junkie Fan Club and our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. And we will be back tomorrow with the rest of Peggy Hetrick's story. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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