Going West: True Crime - Peggy Hettrick // 143

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

In 1987, a 37-year-old woman headed out to a Fort Collins, Colorado bar and was never seen alive again. When her body was found in a field by a bicyclist, the investigation into her murder began, starting with the neighbors. This case is full of suspicious characters and has a crime scene that will take you back to The Black Dahlia murder. This is the story of Peggy Hettrick. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://weatherspark.com/h/d/145655/1987/2/10/Historical-Weather-on-Tuesday-February-10-1987-at-Fort-Collins-Loveland-Municipal-Airport-Colorado-United-States#Figures-Temperature http://freetimmastersbecause.blogspot.com/2007/12/peggy-hettrick-murder-victim.html https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/96834225/peggy-lee-hettrick https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/96835249/norma-emerson-hettrick https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/c1j5ga/peggy_hettrick_37_of_fort_collins_co_a_cold_case/ https://www.5280.com/2011/12/presumed-guilty/ https://www.denverpost.com/2007/07/13/sketchy-evidence-raises-doubt/ https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2017/02/08/peggy-hettrick-murder-cold-case-fort-collins/97378070/ https://www.greeleytribune.com/2011/05/11/the-two-lives-of-dr-richard-hammond/ https://www.denverpost.com/2010/09/19/new-dna-evidence-found-in-hettrick-case/ https://docshare.tips/0-tim-masters-combo_574845deb6d87f860f8b4826.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host Heath. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. I've felt so unnatural. I'm changing things up. I'm no longer the other host. She's not the other host anymore. I'm just the host Just like heath is the host. Well, you've always been the host so Thank you guys for tuning in today. We have an Absolutely wild story for you guys. I mean researching this was insane. There's so much to this case I mean researching this was insane. There's so much to this case. There's so many players. It's absolutely insane But first we want to let you guys know about a new Patreon bonus episode that we just released Yes, we just released a new bonus episode for you guys on the Halloween Wolfman murders and

Basically, that is one of the most terrifying cases that I've covered personally. It takes place in San Jose on Halloween night and it involves a masked attacker. So it's very, very, uh... It's a scary, very, yeah, it's really scary. Yeah, so that just came out on our Patreon where we officially have 50 full length ad-free bonus episodes that we are not going to cover on going west. Yes, so you guys can binge all of those. Yes, so go over to patreon.com, p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash going west podcast.

If you guys are all caught up, you want to binge, you want to help support the show. We also do a lot of international cases there because as you guys probably know, we don't do those here on going west. So yeah, check it out and thank you guys for tuning in. There's a lot of people who are watching this video. In 1987, a 37-year-old woman, out to a Fort Collins, Colorado bar and was never seen alive again. When her body was found in a field by a bicyclist, the investigation into her murder began, starting with the neighbors. This case is full of suspicious characters and has a crime scene that will take you back to the Black Dolly a murder.

This is the story of Peggy Hattrick. Peggy Lee Hattrick was born on March 1st, 1949 in Lovell,ll Wyoming to her mother, Norma Emerson-Hatric, and her father, whose name we do not know. And years after came her brother named Thomas. Lovell is still a very small town that has pretty consistently remained around 2500 people, but this family of four didn't stay in Wyoming long. And when Peggy was in high school in 1964, her dad actually moved them to Libya for about three years. He worked for Oasis Oil, so he was on the move quite a bit, and at this time, there was a pretty large American population in Tripoli, which is the capital and largest city of Libya,

because of the wheels' air force base there. So there were lots of army brats around and Peggy went to high school with a number of other American teenagers. And she was incredibly well liked. Peggy was known to be very vivacious, fun, gentle, and intelligent, not to mention a gorgeous red head. And she and her friends in Tripoli had the best times there and reportedly were never short of things to do. During this time Peggy was very interested in music, as well as theater, poetry, films,

and philosophy. She was just very creative and loved the arts, which is why she aspired to write fiction. In the late 1960s, Peggy graduated from high school. She moved around some more before winding up in beautiful Sedona, Arizona, where she spent some time on the Hopi reservation to learn about the Hopi tribes culture and jewelry making. Wow, so she was really, like, really artsy and very creative. Yeah, I love that. That's so awesome.

Yeah, it was great. She was really passionate about the arts and she really wanted to make a career for herself within that field for sure Right, so by the mid 1970s 25-year-old Peggy moved to Loveland, Colorado to be with her mother who was sadly dying from cancer and Peggy's grandmother and uncle Also lived in Loveland, so she was able to get some family time in and obviously obviously everybody really enjoyed that. And by the way she also had family in Wyoming as well as Florida. On May 21st 1978 Peggy's 60-year-old mother Norma passed away, but Peggy decided to remain in the area and moved just about 25 minutes drive north to the charming city of Fort Collins, which is home to the Colorado State University, which definitely and I were just there.

That's actually how I found this case. I was looking for Colorado cases specifically, but Fort Collins is very charming I can confirm. So although she's still dreamed of being a writer, Peggy popped around to different jobs and never seemed to have any money. And actually one December, she nonshelonly stated to a friend that she spent her last penny on her holiday party. At age 33 in 1982, she got a job at a clothing store in the foothills mall in Fort Collins called the Fashion Bar, and seemed to be fairly comfortable in her role there in the lingerie department. But she did reportedly want to look for a new job, but she just didn't have the confidence

to do so. Her supervisor described her as gentle, creative, and fairly quiet, a good employee who was always equipped with a smile. And Peggy still enjoyed traveling as much as she could, though, you know, it was kind of financially hard to do so. And her favorite hobbies included cooking and reading, and she was known to be a very good cook. While working at the fashion bar, Peggy was indeed working on a novel about diamond smugglers,

and she had apparently been working on it for years, although she was only around 50 pages in by the time she was 37 in late 1986. But it was something, and she even bought a new typewriter to work on it. In December of 1986, Peggy had yet another Christmas party in the clubhouse of her Fort Collins apartment complex, which was pretty much tradition for her at this point. The year before had been a success, minus the fact that her friend Barbara accidentally burned a hole in the clubhouse's carpet. And Peggy's comment regarding this for her 1986 Christmas party was, quote, we'll see if we can burn a bigger one this year.

So as you can tell, she's definitely silly and easygoing. On the menu for this evening was Dijon Chicken Fingers shrimp patay, salmon cream cheese spread, orange slices, a veggie tray and mixed nuts. As far as festivities, there would be poker, a craps table, and a pool table for everyone to enjoy. So Peggy really went all out for her friends, so they could all have a good time together. And that they did. Peggy had boyfriends here and there, but no one very serious in her life during her 30s. She was known to sometimes ask her friends for relationship advice and she told her neighbor, a minister, a couple different times, that she was unintentionally attracted to men who used drugs

and alcohol who also weren't very good to her and she didn't know why this was. But she was also into guys who were a bit younger and dressed nice, so her types seemed to vary. There was a man who was more of an on-again, off-again boyfriend of hers named Matt Zolner, a local car salesman, but there was a lot of jealousy between them. However, they were kind of back on in early 1987. Tuesday, February 10, 1987, was a fairly chilly day and evening in Fort Collins, when Peggy got off work at the fashion bar at 9 p.m. and walked home, since she didn't have a car in the 40 degree Fahrenheit weather. And I say only fairly chilly because it's typically much colder than this in Colorado

during winter. She had recently gotten a temporary roommate and had lent them her key, which she remembered when she got to her front door and couldn't get inside. Her roommate was inside sleeping and no amount of banging woke them up. Not wanting to just stand outside the cold, Peggy headed to the laughing dog Saloon before later heading back to her apartment at the Aspen Leaf Complex on Stover Street when her roommate woke up. But around midnight, Peggy went back out again after changing her clothes and headed to a

bar in Grille called the Prime Minister on College Avenue and Boardwalk Drive, just one mile or about 1.6 kilometers from her apartment. Once at the Prime Minister, Peggy sat at the bar alone, ordered a Vod Katonic and lit up a merit cigarette. She then noticed that her boyfriend Matt Zolner, while ex-boyfriend again of just a few days, was at the Prime Minister too, but he was with another woman having some drinks. She exchanged some words with him and they reportedly had a slight argument. Within an hour of arriving between 1 and 1.30 a.m., Matt remembered seeing Peggy leave the bar alone

while he remained there with his dates. At this time, the temperature would have been around 30 degrees Fahrenheit give or take, and Peggy's walk home was just over 20 minutes, and she was used to walking pretty much everywhere since she hadn't had a car. You know, most of her adult life, if not all of her adult life, so walking was something she did a lot. Later that morning on Wednesday, February 11, 1987, Peggy's grandmother EC arrived at her apartment so they could go out to breakfast and then do some shopping as they had planned. But Peggy's grandmother EC arrived at her apartment so they could go out to breakfast and then do some shopping as they had planned. But Peggy wasn't home, though her bedroom light was still on.

She also had a plan that afternoon with a friend from work, Tammy Wit, they had a lunch date planned, but Peggy wouldn't show. And when Tammy called in to work, she found out why. Peggy Hedrick was just over two weeks away from her 38th birthday. But the same winter Wednesday morning her grandmother went to pick her up, Peggy was found murdered. At 7am, a bicyclist saw what he originally figured was a mannequin in an open field in southern Fort Collins, along the 3,800

block of South Landing's Drive, which was less than a half a mile or under 0.8 kilometers from the Prime Minister Bar, the last place that Peggy was seen. As the bicyclist got closer, he realized that it was no mannequin, and the police were quickly called to the scene to investigate. The body identifiers matched those of Peggy, 5'2", 115 lbs, blue eyes, red hair, and it was later officially confirmed to be a match. Peggy had died from a single stab wound to her upper left back, likely very shortly after she left the Prime Minister bar. The next detail is quite gruesome and involves post-mortem mutilation, but it's important to mention it,

so feel free to skip ahead 15 seconds if you don't want to hear this. But whoever killed Peggy had sexually mutilated her genitals. They removed her left nipple and ariola with precision and performed a female circumcision. One doctor described this circumcision as a partial vulvectomy, which is something that requires high skill as well as quality surgical equipment. The corner hadn't seen anything like these wounds in his 21 years of performing autopsies, so this was incredibly disturbing and strange. And as I mentioned a minute ago, the mutilation was thankfully done post-mortem, so after

Peggy was already dead. And this is weirdly very reminiscent to the Black Dolly case. I mean, right down to the very precise, doctor-esque mutilation, and the remains being left in an open field. Pretty eerie. Or even something like Jack the Ripper. I mean, to have like a very skilled surgical mutilation take place. I mean very scary. You don't really see that very often. So that that really makes this case stand out. Yeah, and what's really interesting to me is that this killer only stabbed Peggy one time, and that one blow from that knife to the back is the one that killed her.

I know, and I know it's because she had a lot of internal bleeding, and actually to go into that a bit right now. So when Peggy was found, her eyes were open, her arms were outstretched against, you know, the brown fallen leaves, and her purse was still around her arms were outstretched against, you know, the brown fallen leaves, and her purse was still around her shoulder, which could indicate that she was attacked very suddenly while walking home. Yes, if she didn't know that her attacker was behind her. Exactly.

And the blood trail from the knife wound to her back was a whole 103 feet long, which showed that her body had been dragged across the grass for whatever reason, so there was a lot of blood. Inside her purse were over 50 items, including three packs of cigarettes and her passport, and there were over 13 fingerprints amongst the belongings, some of which belonged to Peggy, others which belonged to her recent ex-boyfriend Matt, and the rest unknown. Because of this and the fact that they had just broken up, you know, Matt was was quickly questioned, but he had now a buy for the evening, and that was his date.

They had been together since around 3.30 a.m. and I will mention that the corner put her time of death between about 1.30 and 3.30 but it's believed to have happened right after she left the bar because it's not like she would be outside for two hours after leaving the bar. Although her friends were completely devastated by her passing, many of them always worried something like this would happen to Peggy. Since she was kind of known to hook up with strangers, go adventuring, and sometimes even walk around alone at night, trying to think up ideas for her book.

But luckily, police were very careful to collect as much evidence as possible, even wrapping paper bags around her hands and feet, and hopes that she may have scratched her attacker, and the DNA would still be there. On her body, they found two hairs that didn't have scratched her attacker and the DNA would still be there. On her body, they found two hairs that didn't belong to her. Peggy's funeral occurred in Loveland, Colorado, and she was buried right beside her mother who had died nearly 11 years earlier at the Loveland burial park.

Before the bicyclist saw Peggy, someone else did. A 15-year-old boy named Timothy Masters. He had been walking to school that morning since he lived in a mobile home with his father just about 100 yards from that field when he saw what he thought was a mannequin, just like the bicyclist. Timothy later stated that he thought some bullies at school had left it there as a prank, you know, if it was a mannequin, to taunt him more that his mother had passed four years earlier As they sadly often did. Wow, that's really fucked up. I know he he really was targeted a lot for bullying It's very sad. Well just getting targeted for like your mother passing away. That's like so much

The horrible thing to bully someone like that is not something to bully someone about not that anything is but So rude so Timothy didn't report the body and when police canvas the area to question residents near that field and Conduct a dragnet. They spoke with Timothy's father Clyde Masters of Vietnam War veteran This was before they knew Timothy had seen Peggy's body But Clyde told them that his son walked through that field to the bus every morning, and that maybe he saw something. And remember, we actually discussed a dragnet in the Krista Worthington

episode, and that's basically when they ask everyone in a certain area for their DNA, and although it isn't fully mandatory, if you don't give it to them, they're probably going to suspect you of something. But it's a super controversial thing, and a lot of people feel that it's a total invasion of privacy, but that's what police did in this case, because they felt that whoever killed Peggy was someone close by. 15-year-old Tim Masters was a sophomore at Fort Collins High School, and he stood at 5 feet 10 inches tall, giving him the nickname Toothpick by his peers.

When police asked him about Peggy's body, he told them that he had seen it, but that he thought it was just a prank, hence why he didn't report the sighting to police. They still didn't understand that, though, because it seemed so strange that he truly thought that it was a mannequin enough to not report it. Also, Tim was an emotional during this conversation. Little did they know he was typically on the quiet side, but it rubbed them the wrong way. And when Tim allowed them to search his bedroom the day after Peggy was found, so Thursday, February 12, 1987, they found some disturbing things amongst his personal items. Horrific writings and bizarre artwork.

Artwork that had previously got in place in special education classes after it disturbed a teacher. See, Tim loved to draw and he loved to write, and he had dreams of becoming a version of Stephen King. There were around 2,000 drawings uncovered in his room, backpack and his school locker, and they included things like dinosaurs with arrows through them, bloody war scenes that his father described to him sometimes, scenes from various horror movies that he watched with his dad, people being murdered or decapitated, etc. But again, Tem's defense was that he just liked horror.

They also found a survival knife collection in his room, and alongside it, on his dresser, was a local newspaper that featured Peggy's story. His new teacher actually wasn't worried about these drawings at all, and she stated that most kids drew horrific images. She knew Tim pretty well and didn't see these images as a sign of anything, that he was a normal kid and never expressed a single actual violent tendency. However, police thought these drawings could only be done by someone who was sick and deranged, and that it couldn't be a coincidence that a woman's body turned up just a short distance from his house. Also, the anniversary of his mother's death was almost nearer, which made police wonder.

So they began testing his DNA against what was found at the scene, you know, the fingerprints, the hair, the blood, everything. And absolutely none of it matched Tim's. But they felt the circumstantial evidence was too strong. So investigators asked Tim to come down to the police station for further questioning. And he brought his dad along but no attorney. And Clyde just waited outside the room thinking that everything would be fine and not thinking that a 15 year old would be very vulnerable in this situation. And that he couldn't understand the potential coercion that was coming his way. You know, not trying to blame you Clyde, but that probably wasn't a good idea.

During his interrogation, they told Tim that they knew he did it. They knew he killed Peggy Hattrick. During Tim's interrogation, police explained to him that they knew he killed Peggy. And Tim's response was, I didn't do it. I've seen people on TV sent a jail for things that they didn't do. One of the investigators then said, you did it. I'm not accusing you. I'm telling you you did it so messed up Yeah, so messed up like this is a 15 year old boy Yeah, and I understand of course because if he did murder Peggy

You know just cuz he's 15 doesn't mean you should go easy on him or let him off the hook But come on you have no actual evidence. Right, so Tim just continued to shake his head and say no, that he was innocent while the police completely berated him. And this went on the entire day. Yeah, they even made him cry. It's all just really sad.

Yeah, and we're gonna get way more into all of this. So, police didn't actually have a single piece of evidence against him that wasn't circumstantial. They didn't even find any of Peggy's blood or hair in Tim's entire house. The investigators had no choice but to let Tim go and explore other avenues while aggressively keeping Tim on the back burner.

They had wondered if Denver's most prolific serial rapist had done this, a man named Brent Brantz, weird, double name, kinda interesting, but whatever. And by the way, Denver is about an hour's drive south of Fort Collins, so it's pretty close, but this guy Brent was actually in prison the night that Peggy was killed. And according to Tim, the night before Peggy was found, which was Tuesday, February 10th, his dad Clyde got home at around 10 and then he and Tim watched a few TV shows together before they went to bed, and then the next morning they both got up and got ready and Tim walked

to his bus. So that's kind of what Tim was up to that night. At least according to Tim and his father. Exactly. So, some locals came forward with potential clues like the person who reported that two weeks after Peggy was killed, a bodybuilder-type man showed up at the Prime Minister bar and it made stabbing motions with an icicle to a red-haired employee who sort of resembled Peggy.

But no one knew who this man was just that that he was about 30 years old, with green or blue eyes, sandy hair, and a square jaw. But he was never identified, and we'll go into this story again a little bit later with more detail, but basically, police knew that Peggy's attack had been quick and sudden, and that she had been stabbed in the back, likely as she walked home down landing's drive in Fort Collins, and then she was dragged into the field, and then either there or somewhere else, the killer used a different knife to sexually mutilate her after she had died.

And their theory with Tim Masters was that he saw her walking from his bedroom window, he crept out and ambushed her. They used his drawings and writings to suggest that he was capable of doing these things in real life. They were basically fitting details about Tim into the murder, which really isn't how it should be done. They were absolutely fixated on him being guilty. Years went by and no one was arrested for Peggy's murder.

Yet investigators periodically questioned Tim throughout the remainder of his high school years, and even after he graduated when he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to join the Navy. About five years after Peggy's murder when Tim Masters was 20, investigators flew out to Philadelphia to question him after an old high school friend of his had told them that Tim mentioned Peggy's sexual mutilation to him the week she was killed. And police knew that that detail hadn't been released, so this felt like it was the

insight they needed to finally nail Tim. So they drew up an arrest warrant and flew to Philly, but when they asked him about it, he said that he did discuss this with some friends since everyone was talking about Peggy's murder, not just him, and that a girl in his art class had been the one to tell him about the mutilation. This girl had been in the field that Peggy was found in on the day that she was found with her Girl Scout troop. And they actually saw her body. And this Girl Scout troop had actually been helping police search the crime scene.

So they were there on official business. Investigators questioned this girl and she corroborated Tim's story, saying that that's exactly what happened. And this is really weird to me that a Girl Scout troop was involved in this sort of thing. I know. Years later, the investigator said, you know, we don't do that anymore.

So maybe in the 80s, they possibly traumatizing for children. I mean, absolutely. This is literally like 15 year old kids, teenagers. So not only that, but also I just, I don't know how they could really help. They're not police officers so I think this is just kind of a messy situation for sure but they don't do that anymore. And by the way, even Broderick's partner, Detective Broderick's partner, Linda Wheeler, felt that he was really getting out of control with this Tim Theory, and that it was really going south,

but Detective Brodrick insisted on beating this dead horse. Like, he felt so strongly that the circumstantial evidence against Tim meant that he was guilty of this crime, and nobody else was. Yeah, and that we call real roading. And tunnel vision and many other things. And it's extremely frustrating. And by the way, I want to make it very clear that I'm not necessarily defending Tim's artwork.

I do, I mean, you guys can go look at the photos. It's definitely disturbing stuff, and he's 15, so I do think that's a little alarming. But I also think it's a little bit hypocritical to look at that and say that the person behind that has to be a killer or has to be deranged because violence is all around us. It's on TV, it's in video games, it's in books, and you don't look at Stephen King and say,

this guy is definitely a murderer. Right. But yeah, I think the artwork is disturbing, but I definitely think that saying he's a killer because of the artwork is a stretch. So anyway, once again, police had hit a brick wall. Another three years passed with no new suspects, and investigators still weren't letting go of him as their main person of interest. Tim was still in the Navy as an aircraft mechanic, and he had no violent offenses or discipline problems at all. Meanwhile, a college student back in Fort Collins noticed something suspicious,

while she was house sitting a doctor and his family's five bedroom, four bathroom house by Warren Lake at the landings, a house that was just a stone's throw or so from Tim Master's house, and the field that Peggy was found in. And the house sitter, a young woman named Lynn Burkhart, suddenly heard a strange noise coming from the basement bathroom. So Lynn followed this noise to a vent by the toilet, and when she looked inside, she saw what she believed was a camera lens. Yes, so Lynn and her friend used a paper clip to break into the room where that camera would be. An office that was used by Dr. Richard Hammond, a prominent Fort Collins' eye surgeon, whose

house it was, and what they found inside horrified them. It showed various cameras that were triggered by light switches and large amounts of pornography, which included many close-up shots through the vent behind the toilet of different women using the restroom or standing in front of the bathroom mirror. So these girls' phone police to explain their findings. And the house was soon raided by police who confiscated all of this evidence. And when 44-year-old Dr. Richard Hammond arrived home from his vacation with his wife, Rebecca, and their two teenagers on March 20,

1995, he was arrested for sexual exploitation. Rebecca claimed to know nothing about the taping whatsoever, and it came as a huge shock to the family and the community. Yeah, I mean, because it really seemed like Richard was held at a very high standard, who's very respected in the community, and he was known not only for his professionalism, but for his kindness. He was also admired by other doctors for his surgical skills and precision with his scalpel, so it's no real shock that his hobbies included, you know, the same kind of skill of precision,

like metal making, woodworking, and jewelry making. And although Richard had a specific daily schedule of working long hours as an eye surgeon, and still fitting in time to hit the gym, he was often out of town, or was just gone for a number of hours a day doing who knows what. So when Richard was arrested, his wife started to think back to some instances where she was a bit suspicious of him. She explained to police that he was an insomniac, and many nights she would find him working

in his basement office in the middle of the night. Yeah, I'm sure he was working. I know. She had also recently uncovered that he had a knife and gun collection, which surprised her a great deal. And another worrisome memory included the basement flooding. I don't know when that happened, but at some point in recent history of this arrest,

their basement have flooded and Richard ran out with various mysterious containers, and that was kind of a memory she had of like, what was in those containers that he was rushing out to make sure they weren't going to get damaged by the flood? And I think investigators really lost sight of the fact that the precise mutilation couldn't have been done by just a regular Joe. Like, that would have taken someone very skilled, you know, not just someone who had a survival knife collection because his dad was a veteran, and he himself wanted to be in the Navy, and was fascinated by war and survival tactics.

This type of job, for lack of a better word, had to be conducted by a person who knew exactly what they were doing, because it was very clean. That's why, I mean, initially reading this, you're like, a doctor had to have done this. Right, it's a surgical procedure. It is literally a surgical procedure and so many doctors who had reviewed Peggy's autopsy said the exact same thing. So, as Detective Mikkelson and Detective Crenning reviewed the footage in Richard's possession, they were disturbed and confused at his seeming deep fascination with women's genitalia. And many of the videos, while a woman was on the toilet, he would do extreme zoom-in shots

that were nearly microscopic. He also had videos of women changing in the bathroom in front of the mirror, where he would capture videos of their breasts. Richard was able to post his bail, and then he checked himself into the mountain crest hospital to receive therapy. And within those sessions, he briefly discussed how unhappy he was with his life, and that he had been a lawyer since he was a teenager. Richard was only at the hospital for a few days, and then they released him after he confirmed that he wasn't suicidal. But during this time inside, police continued to uncover more of his secrets,

including a storage unit that he had rented that contained thousands of pornographic materials, including jewelry and sex toys. And on top of this, he had a secret apartment, bank account, and even identity, all of which he was hiding from his wife and his family. Which is insane and just a small side note, his wife Rebecca, who was a state-home mom, she described him as quiet and gentle and added, quote, we have the most plain vanilla wholesome sex life that one could imagine. He was kind of a wimp. Wow, geez, Rebecca. So it seemed like, you know, he had a complete other side to him that he had very well.

Because I mean, the girls and women in these videos that he would take his victims ranged between early teens and mid-40s. Like, they were friends of his kids, friends of his wife, babysitters, house sitters, et cetera. So five days after 44-year-old Richard was arrested, on March 25, 1995, police were called to a Lakinta motor in in North Denver, and there, they found Richard Hammond dead by suicide.

He had an IV needle sticking out of his thigh poisoning him with cyanide. I don't think I've ever heard or read of somebody poisoning themselves with cyanide. Yeah, yeah, going out that way. Yeah, I haven't either. I can't explain this, but he did write a suicide note, and part of it said, My death should satisfy the media's thirst for blood. When he was found, Richard's entire body was shaved, which is both something many body builders do, as Richard was, but also something that predators often do to avoid leaving

hairs at a crime scene. One of the investigators on Richard Hammond's case, Detective Mikkelsen, or it might be Detective Michaelson, we're not sure, but they told Detective Tony Sanchez the lead on Richard's case that he should be investigated for Peggy's murder. And Tony apparently just kind of brushed this suggestion off. And in fact, his boss was Detective Jim Brodrick, the lead on Peggy's case,

and the one who believed that Tim was behind Peggy's murder. So not shockingly, nothing was done to see if the cases were connected. And on top of that, in August of 1995, investigators destroyed every piece of evidence that they seized from Richard's home due to, quote, unquote, legal issues. And Detective Mikkelsen and Detective Crenning, who were both on Richard's case, could not believe that they spent over eight hours burning all of it. And they also couldn't remember a single other case where this kind of thing occurred.

Yeah, why would you do that? I just don't understand. Like this is... Yeah, maybe it's not relevant at the time, but, you know, hindsight is... It's just the best. Yeah, why would you do that? It just doesn't make any sense to me. We're gonna mention this a little bit more later to kind of go into a little bit more detail about why this happened But it's a very dumb reason in my opinion and I don't think you should ever destroy evidence, but anyway Also going back to a little bit about Rebecca Hammond, so she stated quote I'm quite absolutely sure that Richard was not involved in any way shape or form.

He was not a violent man. And I just feel like, you know, he was able to hide this other side of him for so long and she had no idea, so although she was married to the guy, respectfully, I don't think she really knew who he was at all. And to say he's not violent, she also would have more than likely denied that he was a sexual predator before there was concrete evidence. So I don't think this quote is really something to go off of. Not that there's any concrete evidence that Richard was violent because there wasn't,

but that doesn't mean that he's not guilty of Peggy's murder. And I just wish that he could have been properly questioned regarding it so that we could all know for sure. And I don't really know why he would kill her in the first place or why he would keep her body so close to his own house. But I just think, you know, he's a solid suspect. He was clearly a master of deception because he fooled every single person he knew. Also, there were many discrepancies with Rebecca Statements.

For example, she told police that Richard never used a scalpel. Only lasers during his surgery because remember he's an eye surgeon. But when police asked Richard's business partner Dr. Jerry Olsen if Richard ever used a scalpel, he said, all ophthalmologists do. And he even went into detail about a sharp and precise scalpel that is smaller than a typical scalpel that is used in cataract surgery because it's so precise. And he witnessed Richard using these and knew that he had scalpoles around the office.

So I mean, this is relevant because this would be the tool that would have been used to sexually mutilate Peggy Hedrick, but his Richard's wife said, oh he didn't use scalples, but he did. And I mean no disrespect to Rebecca at all or their family, I just think we should really be looking into him. And also to be very clear, you know, I'm not going to go out and say that Richard Hammond is 100% a killer. Obviously he's a predator, you know, based on the evidence that was found in his house,

but I will not go out there and say, yeah, 100% Richard Hammond is the one who killed Peggy. Well, that's why I'm saying there's no evidence of him being violent. I just think that the fact that he was a doctor, the fact that he clearly had a deep fascination with women's genitalia, I think that could be a very interesting angle to Peggy's murder or because it would make a lot of sense that her killer would have that kind of fascination and those skills. But of course, there isn't any actual evidence that Richard is behind this either. And that's because they never tested his DNA. So I'm not saying he did it. I'm just saying

this could be a good lead. Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely think that his DNA needs to be tested. However, they need to do that. I think that that needs to happen. And going back to the muscular man who had threatened the red-headed bartender at the Prime Minister, so here's that full story, because it could link to Richard Hammond. So Terry Sofri's kept getting these prank phone calls from a man who knew her name as well as her son's name. And then a few days after Peggy was killed,

she was standing near the door of the Prime Minister bar when she heard a familiar voice say her name outside. A very muscular man in his 30s, with sandy hair, started making stabbing motions at her with an icicle, because it was winter, and this really disturbed her. I mean, yeah, I don't, that's such a weird thing to happen. Yeah, I don't know, yeah, it's thing to happen. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's very creepy. You know, randomly, this guy's just making stabbing gestures like what? Anyway, it's creepy that she recognized that it was the same voice from the phone calls,

like, oh my god, that is so freaky. Yeah, yeah, definitely agree. So Richard Hammond had the very same description as this in 1987. And just a few months later in April of 1987, there was an indecent exposure incident just a block from where Peggy's body was found. And he had the same description as Terry's prank collar. The victim of this indecent exposure case was later shown a photo of Richard Hammond. And they said he looked just like the man who had flashed them. Rebecca Hammond has stated that Richard didn't start bodybuilding until three years later in 1990, but this is definitely interesting information.

And I think the potential connection with Terry Sofries is very interesting because if that was Richard, or it was, you know, somebody else, maybe they thought that Peggy was Terry the bartender when they saw her walking out of the Prime Minister bar that evening. I mean, it's possible. Just nine weeks after all the evidence in Richard's case was destroyed, Detective Jim Broadrick went right back to looking at then 25-year-old Tim Masters. In 1997, he at a San Diego California Forensic psychologist named Reed Maloy looked into Tim's old drawings. First off, Reed Maloy had a reputation at this time as an expert witness on

sexual homicides, and he'd expressed in a court testimony that he had a personal interest in it because he himself had sexually sadistic fantasies. And this is why Brodric went to him to get his expert opinion on the drawings to see if there was anything behind them. And this is really when the case against Tim Maser's got its fuel. Because Reed looked at those ten-year-old drawings and felt strongly that Tim translated his sadistic fantasy of death into reality with Peggy's murder.

So this kind of sounds like a bit of a stretch here. I agree. So Reed also pointed out that Tim had all the descriptors of a killer, a bandedman issues from his dead mother, he was a bit of a loner, and apparently, according to his drawings, he had violent fantasies. So the following year in August of 1998, Tim was 27 years old and had been honorably discharged from the Navy and he was living in California when he received a knock on his door. He was just relaxing at home with his dog's eye-contina, and when he opened the door, it

was Jim Brodrick, who walked inside of his house and announced, Tim Masters, you're under arrest for the murder of Peggy Hedrick. By this time, DNA testing was much more advanced than it had been when she was murdered, but still, Tim's DNA was not found at the crime scene. Months later, in February of 1999, Tim stood trial for Peggy's murder and maintained his innocence. His drawings and writings were shown to the jury, and prosecutors also detailed that Tim's footprints from the morning that Peggy was found, had veered off of his regular bus stop route to place him about six feet from Peggy's body. They told the jury that this was typical behavior for a killer to return to the crime scene.

As we know, Tim's excuse was that he thought it was a mannequin and that it was just a prank. And the interrogation video of 15-year-old Tim Masters was not shown to the jury. Just big blown-up images of his drawings shown amongst photos of Peggy's body. But the defense felt that they had it under control since the prosecution had no physical evidence putting Tim at the scene of the crime. But of course, they worried, especially since the man the jury was potentially going to convict, was a now muscular, nearly 30-year-old, not a scrawny, shy 15-year-old, you know, they never saw that Tim. And with that, Tim Masters was found guilty of Peggy's murder, and he was sentenced to

life in the Boinevista Prison in Colorado. Five years later in 2004, Tim Masters received an interesting letter from a man living in Denver who had watched a show about Peggy's case, and this guy just couldn't believe that Tim was guilty. He genuinely felt that an innocent man was behind bars. He worked as an accountant, but he convinced Detective Linda Wheeler, who remember was Detective Broadrick's partner, to be part of an exoneration bid to help prove Tim's innocence, and she agreed. The state of Colorado provided Tim with a defense attorney, Maria Leo, and she felt passionate

about helping. Just from her first meeting with Tim, she knew that he was innocent, and that she was the one who could help him get out of prison. So she began digging deep. During her research, Maria uncovered that Tim's defense didn't highlight the fact that mutilation done to Peggy's genitalia required a high degree of surgical skill and a high grade surgical instrument. Also, it couldn't have been done in that field because such a procedure would need good lighting, and Peggy's legs would have needed to be in

frog position. So it makes you wonder what really happened, because we know her body was dragged to where she was ultimately placed, because of the blood trail. But then when in where would her body be transported, and then she was brought right back to the same spot, like it's pretty confusing, but I do agree. There's no way that this procedure could have been done in a dark field at two in the morning. Yeah, exactly.

But a doctor who reviewed the photos of Peggy's autopsy felt confident that her body had to have been taken to a room with bright light, which excludes Tim because one, there was no evidence in his house that Peggy was ever there, two, he didn't have medical tools, and three, he didn't have a car or know how to drive. Also, Maria and this doctor noted that the person would have to be very strong to be able to do all of this on their own, which 15-year-old Tim very much wasn't. But they still needed more evidence if they were going to get Tim's conviction overturned,

so Detective Wheeler helped defense attorney Maria Leo hire two forensic scientists from the Netherlands who were known for their incredibly meticulous crime scene analyses. Their mission was to ensure that Tim's DNA was not on Peggy's body, but also to figure out the cellular makeup of the real killer. And they did jump through a bunch of hoops and wait a couple years dealing with all the legalities, but in 2007, Tim Masters' legal team got the approval for the evidence to be tested in the Netherlands. During the testing, one of the forensic analysts, Richard Eichlinboom, tested 50 different parts of Peggy's clothes for DNA evidence, skin, sweat, blood, etc.

And Tim's DNA profile didn't appear even once. However, there was skin found in the interior lining of Peggy's underwear, and it belonged to an unknown man. They even had a full genetic profile of this man, and it matched someone who had already been questioned years and years earlier. Matt Zolner There was also some of his DNA found on her shirt, but we know that they had seen each other on the evening of her death and that he had spoken to her.

As we know, Matt was a car salesman, and he was with another woman that night apparently until about 3.30am, over two hours after Peggy left the bar. So, although it's strange that his DNA was found, especially on the lining of her underwear, it's possible that they got very close that night, but then why didn't he tell that to police? Even with this new information, we couldn't find anything that said Matt was questioned again, or was considered a suspect with this new information. But weirdly enough, when Peggy was found, there was a note on her that was addressed to Matt,

and it said, Don't be surprised if I show up around two locked out. So maybe she was planning to go to his apartment that night? I had read in an article that she had stopped by his apartment before she had gone out to the bars that night and he wasn't home, but we can't really confirm that, and we also don't know when this note was for. I mean, it could have been in her pocket from another day or something like that. Also, by the way, earlier we stated that Matt saw her leave the bar between 1 and 1.30

a.m. But some articles stated instead that he offered to take her home, then went to the bathroom and when he came out, she was gone. And this doesn't make sense to me though because he was on a date, so I'm not sure why he would offer his recent ex-girlfriend a ride home. And the woman that he was with, Dawn Gilbreath, was Matt's date that night. And she said that they stayed at the bar until it closed, and then they drove in Matt's car together to his apartment where they talked and

drank wine until 330. Let's go back to Tim Masters. So with all this new evidence that they had found, they pushed for exoneration, and luckily it was acknowledged that the original defense attorneys on Tim's case didn't have a large enough amount of information obtained by the Fort Collins Police Department to be able to properly defend him. So on January 22, 2008, almost exactly nine years after his conviction, Tim's conviction was finally vacated and he was released from prison immediately.

And this was such a big win for Tim, for his team and for his family. Especially because on top of this, just a couple years later in 2010, Jim Brodric was indicted on eight counts of first degree perjury for various false statements that he made in order to get Tim Masters arrested and convicted for Peggy's murder. The three-year statue of limitations for perjury

had expired though, but the following year, a different Larimer County Grand Jury re-indicted Jim Broderick on nine counts of Purgery, with up to six years of prison for each count. But sadly, once again, those charges were dismissed. So annoying. I know. Why? So, in 2013, Jim resigned, apparently, to avoid an internal investigation on how he handled Peggy's case.

And as far as we could find, Jim Broderick still thinks that he was right about Tim Masters and calls arresting him the high point of his career. Ugh. He didn't think that there was any point in investigating Richard Hammond at all, which is why it was never done. He later admitted that he had a lot to do with destroying all the evidence in Richard's case, saying, it was an ethical decision. Should we re-victimize all these women by telling them that they're victims? And going back to Matt Zolner briefly, sorry for jumping around, his brother Ben was actually considered a potential

suspect early on in the case, but it was not included in the police case file that was given to Tim's defense in his 1999 trial, like many other details of the case. This tip came from Peggy's former roommate who said she thought Matt's younger brother was quote, very strange, and she felt he would quote, be a good suspect. FC now contacted Ben Zolner on the phone in 2011, and without even being asked, Ben denied killing Peggy and said, I'm telling you straight up, I didn't do it. I didn't have anything to do with it. Kind of weird that you would just write off the bat, say that, but all right.

Yeah, and then he proceeded to say that his brother Matt, quote, couldn't have cut her like that. And that neither of them were involved. But Barry Goetz, the former head of the CBI, aka the Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensics Lab, made an interesting point. That the way DNA was swabbed by the C.B.I. in this case, it could be hard to tell one brother from another, meaning it's possible that the DNA found on Peggy's underwear could belong to Ben instead.

But it's also a bit hard to believe that Ben would have the precision to mutilate Peggy because from what we could find, he didn't have any experience in that field in any way. You know what I think is really bizarre about this murder? Is that there weren't any others like it in the area around this time at all? And I feel like this, I know you can say the same about the Black Dolly a murder, but it feels like this person who did this, it wasn't their first time. So I'm really surprised to know that there weren't others. Yeah, to have that kind of precise surgical skill, I feel like either A, you would have had to have had

I feel like either A, you would have had to have had surgical experience, previously, or that you had killed people previously, in this way. Or both. I know we all want to know if the DNA was ever tested against Richard Hammond. We know what Dragnet was done in the area, but we're not sure if he was a part of that. We know Jim Broderick didn't feel the need to test Richard against Peggy's murder, and since all the evidence surrounding him and his crimes was burned, it's possible that they would have to exume his body, assuming that he was buried and not cremated, or possibly get his children's DNA. It's also known that Peggy had an admirer known only as Derrick, who had long hair and was 24 years old when Peggy was killed,

and she had previously rejected him after they had met at the laughing dog Saloon. And after she did this, he had been turning up at her apartment uninvited. So it definitely seems like there's a lot of players here, yet unfortunately, the identity of Peggy Hattrix Killer remains a mystery to this day. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. This is such a wild story and it's so devastating to know that Peggy's actual killer has not

been brought to justice and we're really interested to know what yougy's actual killer has not been brought to justice, and we're really interested to know what you guys think, who you think the killer could be. I'm just hoping that because they have so much DNA evidence in this case, that someday there will be a match found. Yeah, exactly, and that's why it's really important for you guys to share this case, because we want to bring it back into the limelight, we want people to be talking about it. And weirdly, I feel like, no, I have never heard this case anywhere and to me this is one of those cases that I feel like would be everywhere. Exactly, so please, please, please share this story. And also, we want to give thanks to everybody who's

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