Who Might Have Done It

The best reason why Tim didn't kill Peggy is that someone else did. Although he was the only "named" suspect, quite an array of other possibilities were looked at by the police at one time or another, no matter how brief or half-hearted those glances might have been. Or maybe some weren't looked at.

Clyde Masters: Tim's father was questioned extensively, which is good. If there had been physical evidence of murder in or around their home, the father would just as likely be responsible as the son. And Clyde was career military. Even if he didn't kill anybody in the war, he'd certainly been taught how. The night Peggy died, he was at a vocational class from 6 to 10 p.m. After that time, he must have had a darn good alibi, because nothing was ever said in the press about his being a suspect.

Matt Zoellner: Although his and Peggy's relationship seems to have been so open that the term "boyfriend" was meaningless, that's what the newspapers called him. One of the truisms of murder investigation is: first, you look at the domestic partner and/or the love interest. I don't say that Mr. Zoellner was or should be a suspect. It's just that he was never identified by name in the contemporary news reports, and none of the stories ever said much about him, which seemed odd, and stirred curiosity. Much later, I heard that he owned knives capable of producing the wound that killed Peggy, knives that were neither seized as potential evidence nor sent away for analysis. His car received a cursory examination, but was not impounded or thoroughly searched. Why didn't the police deem Mr. Zoellner worthy of closer scrutiny? After all, he did admit to having a fight with Peggy that night. Then, he offered her a ride home and excused himself for a moment to visit the restroom. When he was ready to go, she was talking to someone else and/or looking mad. So she ended up leaving some other way. And he's the last known person to have seen Peggy alive. He and the other woman went to an apartment and talked until three in the morning. (According to them, it's all they did. In case you were wondering.)

The Other Woman: If this were a detective story, the Other Woman would obviously have a motive - either to carry out the murder herself, or to provide an alibi for the boyfriend. She would certainly have more of a motive than Tim Masters did.

Donald Long: A month after Peggy's death, Long abducted a woman and stabbed her to death, and in November of the same year he abducted another one and stabbed her to death too. Both their last names, like Peggy's, started with H. The difference was, they were stabbed many times while Peggy, first in the sequence, was stabbed only once. This charmer pleaded guilty to killing the other two. It is said that although there were similarities between their deaths and Peggy's, the police let it slide. Back in 1992, journalist Tony Balandran wrote of Long, "For some reason officials decided he could not possibly be connected to Hettrick's death. The reason remains unclear today." That hasn't changed. In 2007, a source close to the defense said, "We don't know why he was eliminated."

Name Unknown: Not long after the murder in 1987, the police questioned someone they heard about from an informant. This guy had also been seen talking to Donald Long. He supposedly knew about the nipple excision (which by then must have been common knowledge) and the genital mutilation (which was not believed to be common knowledge at the time - but hey, they thought nobody knew about the other thing, either.) Someone in the defense camp says, "He took a polygraph test and passed every question except for, 'Do you know who killed Peggy Hettrick?'"

The Biker: a troublemaker who died around 2005. In a bar he was heard saying something like "stuck her pussy with a knife." He had been in jail for beating or mutilating a woman. Regarding Peggy, he was investigated and cleared.

Confessors: A source close to the defense says, "Two people confessed to this crime. Both were briefly interviewed (nothing like the 9-hour tag team marathon they did on Tim) and nothing else. Their houses were not even searched for evidence. One was a kid who was quickly eliminated."

Satanist Youth: Then there was the 16-year-old boy who was into satanism and the occult. Although he bragged about killing Peggy, his home was never searched. When interviewed by police he denied any connection, and said he heard at school that some kid named Tim was involved, which they were glad to hear, since they had started the rumor by telling their Explorer interns to avoid Tim.

Someone Needing a Patsy: The fiction writer in me suggests that some older person, perhaps in a position of authority, could have convinced Tim to take the fall because he was a minor and wouldn't be punished severely. That kind of thing has been known to happen.

Protected Informant: Rumor has it there was cocaine around, the night Peggy was killed, which adds yet another dimension to the mystery. When the War on Some Drugs becomes part of an equation, all bets are off and anything goes. Was a favorite snitch allowed to get away with murder in order to protect some long-standing undercover operation?

Foreign Assassin: What was Peggy's dad doing anyway, over in Tripoli, Libya, that caused her to spend her high school years there? Maybe someone from overseas was a black-ops agent who annoyed the wrong faction, and Peggy was eliminated in revenge for an old political feud. It is a world where anything can happen.

Stranger in a Bar: Peggy had just encountered her alleged boyfriend with another woman. Who knows, maybe she was in a general man-hating mood, and the next guy who tried to buy her a drink got slapped down. Maybe he was the kind of guy who doesn't take "attitude" from a woman. There are guys like that.

Stranger on the Road: A lot of people pass through Fort Collins, which seems to be the main shopping town for most of Wyoming (next state to the north). The main street is only a short walk from Peggy's murder scene, or at least dump scene.

There were possibilities other than Tim, whether officially recognized or not. And there was one very good possibility, so good in fact that the government's failure to tell Tim's defense attorneys about this man, who should have become the prime suspect, is the basis of the current legal action.

Who Probably Did It

The Hammond Affair took place in early 1995, eight years after Peggy was murdered. Tim, although he had been accosted three years earlier in Philadelphia by police who intended to arrest him, was at this time still a free man.

Back in Fort Collins, a woman I'll call Chris responded to a house-sitter ad, written on an index card and posted on a bulletin board. Arriving at the address, she was shown around by the lady of the house. Encountering the husband, a body-builder type, Chris got the impression that he was coming on to her, non-verbally, right in front of his wife. Chris would be occupying the basement family room, which had a hide-a-bed and bathroom. She was shown the off-limits areas of the basement, including the husband's office, which was said to be locked.

The family left for vacation and, once settled in, Chris couldn't help noticing that when the toilet was in use, a strange noise would start up. A friend came over to help figure it out, and they found, hidden behind a grate across from the commode, a video camera. As it turned out, the office door wasn't locked after all. In that room they discovered the hole in the wall through which the camera was accessed, an array of high-tech videography and editing equipment, and many videotape cases including one with Chris's name printed on it in readiness.

The police received a call around 3:30 in the morning, obtained a warrant, and searched the house later that day. They found a sophisticated setup including two cameras that warmed up when the bathroom light was turned on and were activated by motion sensors, and another hidden camera aimed at the bed. They took away two televisions, seven VCRs, and more than 300 videotapes. On later examination, the tapes proved to be semi-professional work, with shots from the various camera angles spliced in. There was also a log that listed the names and ages (13 to 50 years) of the victims whose privacy had been violated, along with dates and reference numbers matching the cassettes. It would take a lot of work to determine whether there were tapes with no log entries, or log entries with no tapes.

The next day, Monday, homeowner Dr. Richard Hammond turned himself in and was arrested. Several hours later he put up $5,000 bond, agreed to get a psych consult, and was released. Sgt. Jim Broderick told the local paper about it. The public also learned that friends of the 13-year-old Hammond daughter had been videotaped. On Tuesday, several students who had visited the house asked a high-school counselor for help. It is to be hoped that the Hammond girls got help from somewhere too, because they were both subjects of their father's peculiar hobby.

On Wednesday, the DA made a statement to the effect that no charges had been filed, because the police didn't quite know yet what they had gotten hold of, or how much of it. On Friday, police searched for half an hour at the eye clinic where Hammond worked and found no evidence of taping there. By now, the uncertainty over what offenses to charge the doctor with, had expanded to a question of who should do the charging. A couple of potential victims and/or witnesses had parents who worked in the DA's office. This conflict of interest could lead to problems, so a special prosecutor from outside was called for.

Friday night, Dr. Hammond went to Denver, 60 or 80 miles away, depending on which part of it you aim for, and checked into a motel. He injected a deadly toxin into a one of his own veins, and the next day was found dead by a maid.

A therapist who taught at Colorado State University was quoted in the local paper: "His suicide will leave questions unanswered." Hammond's lawyer said these prophetic words: "This is a tragedy and it goes far beyond his death." The Larimer County DA made an equally and eerily predictive comment: "This doesn't end it for the victims, that's for sure."

None of them knew it, but they were talking about Tim Masters. The tragedy of Dr. Richard Hammond has indeed extended far beyond his death, into the life of a man who was convicted of a murder that Dr. Hammond might well have committed. Truly, Hammond's death didn't end it for the victims, and Tim became one of those victims.

Of course the question on many lips was, would the investigation of Hammond's activities continue? Police commander Brad Hurst said it would, because quite a few people wanted to know if they had unknowingly starred in the doctor's home movies. And had the filmmaker kept all the jollies for himself, or was he into any kind of distribution, commercial or otherwise? But Hurst also said, "The investigation into any crimes committed by Dr. Hammond is complete." (Now the inner alarm bell system kicks in.) An official from the DA's office in an adjacent county, where the case had been transferred, agreed that "…generally, in the case of suicide, the case will be closed."

Some people think a doctor wouldn't kill anybody. When the lavatory video scandal erupted, those who had met Hammond in his professional and social capacities, the colleagues and patients and the denizens of society's upper layer, were shocked. They had known him, you see, as a "prominent doctor." Excuse me, but as any true-crime buff will tell you, some of the most flagrant psychopaths and serial murderers in history have been physicians. The list must run into several pages. Where's the surprise? Especially when you're talking about a family man who kept another apartment in Denver, equipped with a mistress who was also secretly videotaped by him.

When the Hammond-as-killer theory recently went public, one reader of the local paper commented sarcastically, "Let's just blame it on a dead guy who can't defend himself." Fair enough, but not good enough. Hammond made the choice to become dead. He chose not to stick around and defend himself against a colorful variety of legal charges. If he did kill Peggy Hettrick, the fact that he's dead is an insufficient reason to let him off the hook for it, and an even lousier reason to let Tim serve a life sentence in prison.

Hammond's suicide left questions unanswered, for sure. Question #1 - Why didn't the police look at this guy for Peggy's murder? And here is where things start to get murky. In the course of the continuing videotape investigation, one officer happened to notice that the view from Hammond's bedroom window took in the site where Peggy's corpse had been left eight years before. And Peggy had been known to house-sit, on occasion. Some officers felt very strongly that this should be pursued and, at the very least, all the videotapes should be reviewed, to see if Peggy showed up.

Officially, the law enforcers were only interested in determining whether any of Hammond's video productions were out amongst the general public. Now, I don't claim the police should have thought of everything. After all, no organization or person is perfect. But here's the thing: a Hammond/Hettrick connection was thought of. The idea was brought up, suggested, put forward. And ignored. Not only ignored, but actively quashed. The police commander said for the record, "There is no longer an investigation on whether or not [Richard Hammond] committed additional crimes beyond those we were going to charge him with." In other words, never mind about Peggy.

Sgt. Broderick was in charge - the same cop who led the crusade against Tim from the beginning, and whose arrest attempt was painfully foiled three years before. Broderick decided that the modesty of women should no longer be trespassed upon, not even by professionals doing the job we pay them for. Whatever else might be on the tapes didn't matter. They couldn't get Hammond for sex offenses, messing around with minors, or anything else. He was dead. And that Hettrick case was a can of worms Broderick didn't want to see opened at that point or for that reason. Steps were taken to ensure that the matter went no further. The videotapes were soon destroyed without having all been looked at.

Dr. Hammond's suicide was "a tragic end to what has been a painful story," one reporter wrote. But it wasn't the end for Tim, who might never have been arrested if the idea of putting the doctor together with the dead woman had been allowed to develop. There were other reasons to make the connection. For instance: many of the fresh footprints in the field near Peggy's body were made by Thom McAn dress shoes - not exactly the favored footwear of adolescent boys.

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