Paralleled Injustice

A 48 Hours Mystery episode aired the other night that I thought was really interesting. It showed how fast an investigation can take a wrong turn and accelerate at an unrecoverable speed toward false, premature judgement based entirely on circumstantial evidence and fueled purely by the fervor of an over zealous police investigator.
This episode concerned the murder of a thirty seven year old woman, Peggy Hettrick, in Fort Collins, Colorado on February 11th, 1987. She had been stabbed and murdered and displayed gruesomely in an open field.
Veteran cops, Linda Wheeler and Jim Broderick, were the first investigators on the scene the morning of the murder. The victim had been stabbed, dragged through the open field, one of her breasts had been partially removed , she had been castrated, and she had been somewhat undressed and posed....some of these details being significant indicators of a sexual homicide.
The investigation centered around a 15 year old kid, Tim Masters, who lived in a trailer next to the crime scene.Tim's mother had died some years before and he had few friends.Tim had no history of trouble. Tim's father told the police that he thought his son's behavior on the morning the body was discovered, was strange. He said that although the boy usually cut across the adjacent field on his way to catch the school bus, on that morning, he hesitated and veered to the left...as if he'd seen the body or somehow knew it was there. There was a bloody drag mark through the grass to the area in the center of the field where the body was ultimately found. One of the victim's breasts had been partially removed and she had been posed. Tim's footprints were found in the field. (Well, he did cross the field EVERYDAY...but, I guess that point didn't seem pertinent at the time).
When the investigators got the opportunity to search Tim's home, they thought they'd hit pay dirt.....displayed on the boy's dresser were seven survival knives....neatly laid out in sequential order. One of the knives looked like a similar type of knife that could have been used to kill Peggy.
When the investigators started interrogating Tim, they intimated that they were already sure he was guilty of murdering Peggy Hettrick."We know you did it, You know you did it". Tim denied having anything to do with it. He did reveal that he had seen the body, but thought it was a mannequin, so he did not report it. The police were not buying this, even though another witness had told them that they too, had thought the body was a store mannequin.
The next piece of incriminating evidence to surface was a collection of notebooks, found in his room, backpack and school locker, where Tim had drawn numerous gruesome images....one worse than the next....including one thumbnail drawing of female castration. Murder and mayhem. This, to some of the investigators was proof positive that Tim was guilty, and they turned up the heat.
Jim Broderick, above all the rest, was now on a mission...he was sure Tim Masters was guilty of murdering Peggy Hettrick. Linda Wheeler has since said that she saw a 'pack mentality' develop among the investigators. They were no longer looking at other suspects, they thought they had the guilty party and set about proving it. The more Tim Masters claimed he didn't do anything, the more determined Jim Broderick became to prove he did.
There was no forensic evidence connecting Tim to the murder. No blood or hair evidence at all.
Just for the record, there were other suspects.
There was an ex boyfriend, Matt Zoellner who had had a stormy on again, off again relationship with Peggy. This was the first person that Peggy's family suspected. They were sure he was the one responsible for her death. Matt and Peggy had broken up a week before her murder.He admits to seeing her about 12:30 am on the morning of the murder.He claimed he had a date that night and this date gave him an alibi. He claims he later ran into Peggy when she was on her way home, he had offered her a ride home, but she declined his offer and decided to walk instead. This statement makes him the last person to see her alive.
Weeks and then months passed without an arrest.
Among the bizarre theories for motive that the authorities were batting about ...one was that Tim Masters had some sort of deep rooted rage from losing his mother so young (he was 11 when she died), and murdered Peggy out of anger.(You are angry your mom dies so you pick a random woman to kill....hmmm) . Since Peggy Hettrick was killed almost exactly 4 years after Tim's mother died....the theory was that when the anniversary date rolled around again, maybe Tim could be goaded into doing something incriminating.
Patrolman Troy Crenning, was on the 12 member team assigned to stake out and watch Tim Masters for the week or so that encompassed this date. He was not happy with this "goofball theory". They watched the Master's trailer and even staked out Peggy Hettrick's grave . He said looking back he is embarrassed to have been connected to the investigation and what transpired. He said there was even talk in the briefings that the boy might go berserk and lay on Peggy's grave. He thought it was nonsense.
The police duped a newspaper reporter into printing a false story that an arrest in the case was imminent.
The police even left a newspaper obituary of Tim's mother on a friend's truck in an attempt to get the kid to snap.
This very ridiculous psychological experiment produced nothing. Tim did not snap. No crazy behavior. Nothing.
In spite of his lack of sucess in charging Tim with the crime, Jim Broderick became relentless in his pursuit of him. He had put all his belief in Tim's guilt and his own arrogance would not let him see any other alternative. He had too much invested in his initial theory to abandon it now.
Tim was not in jail, but he may as well have been. He had no real life anymore.He went to school and he went home. He had few friends. A significant part of the public believed he was probably guilty, based on what they'd heard from the authorities.
Four years passed and Tim thought he could get on with his life and rebuild his reputation. He joined the US Navy.
The case went cold.
In 1991,Linda Wheeler had been asked, by her superiors, to delve further into the case. More specifically, she was asked to find something that law enforcement could use to arrest Tim Masters. She was told she could NOT go the FBI. She was also told she could NOT look at alternate suspects....ONLY Tim Masters. She worked on this premiss for over a year and began to question many of the theories that had been put forth initially. She was no longer convinced that Tim Masters was guilty.She had been one of the first to tie Tim Masters to the crime and now she was the first to recognize and acknowledge, she may have been wrong. She was very verbal about her new misgivings. She said she was no longer comfortable with Tim Masters as a suspect. By the end of 1993, she was reassigned to patrol duty....demoted. She was ostracised by the rest of the police force.
She'd had enough. She quit the Fort Collins Police Department in 1995.
Jim Broderick, on the other hand had been given a promotion and fueled by his tremendous ego, decided to reopen the case focusing on his favorite suspect.He didn't find any new evidence but in 1997,he found an ally who could read more into the evidence he felt he already had.
Dr. Reid Meloy, is an internationally known expert on sexual homicide. The notebooks with Tim's high school drawings were examined and dissected by Dr. Meloy. Dr. Meloy interpreted the detailed drawings to somehow represent Tim's oppressed rage with his mother and his hatred of her..........(sigh)....and a litany of other nonsense that could only begun to be believed by the academic community. What a bunch of horse shit. Based on this utter bullshit, Tim Masters was arrested.....by Jim Broderick. Just the mere reminiscing of the arrest, in the TV interview brought a smile to Jim's face. What a jackass.
The prosecutors were also unsure of the case.
This trial was fueled solely by the determination of this one lone investigator, who went out of his way to find evidence and experts to expound on that evidence. The expert testimony and bull-weaving that was done by Dr. Meloy along with the drawings in the notebook helped to convict Tim Masters of a crime he said all along he didn't commit. So, be careful what you're doodling while you're on the phone, as it is apparently, sometimes sufficient enough to come back and bite you in the ass...or even get you charged with murder. (Talk about suffering for your art!)
Four years before Tim's arrest, police had been called to the home of a prominent eye surgeon Dr. Richard Hammond...located in the same neighborhood as Tim Masters, also bordering the field where Peggy Hettrick's body had been found. The very perverted Dr. Hammond had set up a video camera to tape guests while they were using the bathroom. In a locked room next to the bathroom they found an elaborate taping system.....and in a nearby storage locker.... about $13,000 worth of pornographic taping equipment and materials (he had kept all the receipts!). Dr. Hammond was arrested and placed in a mental health facility for several days before being released on bond. He promptly committed suicide days after being released. Dr Hammond, a perverted sexual voyeur with surgical skills, was never investigated in connection to the Hettrick murder, even though several investigators now say it did occur to many of them. One of them, a Detective Michaelson, even went as far as to make the connection that Dr. Hammond was making videos of women's private areas....precisely the area that was removed from Peggy Hettrick. Detective Michaelson thought the videos should all be viewed to see if there was a connection. Jim Broderick vetoed that (due to the welfare of the victims ,says he) and all the tapes were destroyed.Partly because of this decision, and the failure of the state to examine all of the alternative suspects and avenues that existed in this case, Tim Masters was granted a new trial.
The appeals attorneys also uncovered other evidence that was never turned over to the defense at the original trial. There were some expert statements, including one by Roy Hazelwood, a world renowned FBI profiler, stating that Tim's drawings DID NOT, in his opinion, reference the murder in any way. This brought up the issue that there were two different 'world renowned experts' with polar opposite interpretations of the same evidence. Jim Broderick preferred instead to go with the statement made by Dr Meloy, which was more in keeping with his own theory. Natch.
Possible exculpatory evidence was being kept under wraps as well. Jim Broderick was keeping his own private files during the course of this investigation.(Obviously, in his righteous attempt to be correct in his assumptions.) There were foot impressions in his file of a Thom McAnn dress shoe that was found immersed in blood at the crime scene. Tim Masters NEVER owned a pair of Thom McAnn shoes.
The defense then enlisted the aid of a couple of forensic experts in the Netherlands, Richard and Selma Eikelenboom who run a specialized criminal laboratory, referred to as the 'crime farm'. They were able to find incriminating DNA evidence.....skin cells.... on the inside of Peggy's under pants belonging to another male----NOT Tim Masters! The defense was also,finally able to show that Peggy Hettrick was murdered in a car... while she was trying to escape from said car.There were scuff marks on the bottoms of her shoes, indicating she was dragged outside a moving vehicle. The murderer then took the body to a location with enough light (not a darkened field) to work on the surgical aspects of the crime.(As one of the detectives had said earlier..."This wasn't done by a 15 year old kid holding a flash light in his mouth"). The killer then brought her body to the field where it was eventually discovered the following morning.
The mere fact that the DNA that was found on Peggy's clothing did not belong to Tim Masters, was not enough to set him free. The lab in the Netherlands now had to work on finding who exactly it did belong to.
Remember Peggy's estranged boyfriend Matt Zoellner? Well, he had originally given a DNA sample in the initial investigation to exclude himself. That sample didn't exclude him. His DNA was found on the inside of Peggy's underpants and the cuffs of her blouse.
The current prosecutor in the case asked the court to vacate all charges against Tim Masters and requested his immediate release after more than 9 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
What does Jim Broderick have to say to all of this?
He proudly proclaimed that Tim Masters' defense team would never have been able to test for the exonnerating DNA if he, himself, hadn't kept such meticulous files.
Unbelievable.
In spite of his deplorable behavior toward Tim Masters throughout this entire investigation, in spite of all his false theories and defamatory accusations, Jim Broderick still managed to figure out a way to give himself credit for the outcome....as well as a pat on the back.
What a guy!
He's still his own biggest fan.

*It should be noted that Matt Zoellner has not been charged in the crime and is still living in Colorado.