Wrongly Convicted? The Dark Truth Behind a 1987 Cold Case | Forensic Files

You have a lot of u pictures of of killing women, don't you? Pictures you've drawn.
I do. Not just women. Huh? Not just women. Peggy Patrick is murdered. She had genital mutilation and one of her
nipples has been removed. How could this happened to us? A stab wound done with surgical
precision and the people who are in charge aren't doing what needs to be done. This is the story of Peggy
Hedrick. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brit. And we are officially back from tour.
It's been a long couple of months, but so so much fun. We got to see 75,000 of our closest
friends. Thanks to State Farm and Pluto TV, who were the sponsors for the tour, let us get on the road, get to meet the
fans, but this was such an incredible story. I mean, collective gas and it's one that
has a very strong call to action that we need your help with. So, for those of you who couldn't make it on the road, we
wanted to bring this story to you as well. How could this have happened to us? But
you know over the years I see so many people losing loved ones. But um and I and the one question that keeps coming
back to me is um if we had done something different if we'd stayed in Hawaii, if we'd stayed in Spain, this
would have never happened. You know, why did this this happen? What what what brought us here to this place, you know,
for this to happen? Um there there's so many multiple universes, you know, we could have
stayed here, stayed there, moved to Florida earlier, um and and she would have been alive today. But she But
it it didn't happen that way. Why? Um I don't know. I don't know. But I wish we would have I wish we would have
done some things differently. Yeah. Uh, in my lifetime now, it's been 30ome years since Peggy's gone and 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? What? Move on. I've got stage 4 colon cancer. I'm doing all right right now, but I 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, you know, but I'd like to see it start. I'd like to see him uh get busy and do their job and and make uh
give Peggy a resolution. you know, maybe me, maybe I'll still be around. I don't know, but I'll try try
to be around. I'm not afraid. Uh, I I'm not afraid of anything anymore. I can't be. I have to
be strong and and um and I want 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 Hedrickk and his sister Peggy Hedrickk 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 700 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
like 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. like 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. But 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 like slung over her
shoulder, and everything is inside it, including her checkbook, which is how they realize she's 37year-old Peggy
Hedrickk. Now, by 9:00 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, not all of those hands were gloved. But when they actually touch her and turn
her over, they see that they were correct. There was 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. Cuz 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 like 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 um where you could tell that something was like drug in the dirt and they suspected that it was her shoes.
And I like I was literally like at one point you saw me dragging people across the audio check office. And the only way
that makes sense is like cuz normally if you drag someone your feet kind of spllay 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 and
but 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 for it to make a 100 ft 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 because
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 like 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 postmortem. So after she was already deceased, that wouldn't have been bleeding. The other thing they
determined at at the autopsy is she was also mutilated elsewhere. So she had genital mutilation as well. And her
nipple being removed, the Emmy notes that that was done with surgical precision. And they said it was done
with a small sharp instrument, something like a like scalpel almost, which was different than what was used to stab her
because they determined that that was a knife that had a 5 in 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 Brit 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 freaking
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 rule. always go a layer deeper because 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. Mh.
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 per. 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 learned 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 9:00 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 pay phone 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,
offagain, currently off boyfriend, Matt Zner. 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 Shawn. He said though he
saw Peggy and they chatted for a little bit. He even offered her a ride when he realized that she had walked and she
originally accepted, but he like went to the bathroom and 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 Shawn, they stayed till last call. Then
maybe Shawn went home with him. She stayed with him till like 3:00 or 3:30. And other people back this up. So the
bartender at Prime Minister saw Peggy leaving alone at 1:15 in the morning. And maybe Shawn backs up that she was
with Matt till last call, then back at his place till 3:00, 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, 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, you know, 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 into 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 six o'clock. Uh I remember 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 the jean jacket. And uh about 6:55, I walked out the back
door to head through 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 uh went through the fence onto the field north of my house.
And I remember seeing it. It started to look more like a a body out there. And I remember
seeing it looked like someone had spray painted brown paint on the ground, reddish 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 veered over to go look
and see what the hell was in the field. And I I walked over towards it, stood there and looked at and to 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 recessa Annie doll that someone had stolen from the school and dropped out in the field as a prank. And
I remember walking away kind of confused about it, thinking, "No, there's no way it's a body. It's
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 recessa Annie doll like he has in his school. Now, I don't know
if anyone listening knows what a recessa 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. I She's like become my friend and she's been on the road with us. She has. She's been everywhere. Annie's
like my emotional support like through tour. They're basically like these like 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 deceased. Well, it's a CPR doll. Yeah. And what's so
wild is I have this picture that I'm I'm not going to share of Peggy's face as she's lying in the field and this
recessa Annie doll side by side. The way Peggy is pale, the way that her mouth is
a gap. Her hair cut, color, style, everything is identical. And I've showed a couple of people on the production
team and and I'll try I explain it the same way I'm explaining it now and people are like, "Okay, yeah, sure. kind
of 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. It is. So, if you're 15 and you're used to seeing that at your school all the
time, you you don't believe that you're walking to school and going to find a dead body. Like, that's just not your
reality. Your body just your mind just like fills in the blanks. 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 Annie doll, a mannequin, whatever. So, they bring him in for
questioning, which his dad okays. He's I mean 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 rule, 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 their proof that they're on to a dangerous individual.
They find a bunch of Tim's drawings. [Music] Two branches of the same tree, two pieces of a soul.
Where one sister goes, the other will be. For she is but half of the whole. The drawings become central to this
case. And like I've seen these drawings so many times, Ashley. They're violent. Like there's one with
like it looks like a They're all handdrawn. 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 like Yes. And this was when we went on tour, this
was we would show the drawings and and like I don't want to downplay it. People would do this like collective gasp where
they were like more than we even thought they would. Yeah. Like they were like shocked by
them. But what I kept saying on tour is like I remember like 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 like the boys in my class
doing these like weird drawings. Well, and I told you like my son's in high school now. He was in middle school
and he also drew weird things. Like I showed you some of his drawings. There's like a cat god and a scepter. Like but
it's also like on algebra homework. Like 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 him, and
they take turns interrogating him alone over the course of 9 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?
Well, they pretty much sure that I did it. Why are they sure you did it? Because all the evidence points towards
me, I guess. You have a lot of um pictures of 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 some. But you know, you have all those knives
and stuff. Don't you do anything with your knives anymore? I like to collect knives.
And what else do you do? You don't do much anything. You just block them. I use them in a
real hiking stuff. What are you using for like a cut and wind 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 has 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 detective. Half my people lost all their sleep last night. Were trying
to find you. Now, in all that time, Tim never confessed, never admitted anything, which in and of itself, I
think, is 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 drawing. So they have to release him, but they are convinced that he is still their guy.
None more than a man named Detective Jim Brick. 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. 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 this kid is not
your guy. 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 profiler shopping like and they don't do another official profile. I don't know if the
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 like 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 may whatever but he's like listen what I
have seen before I 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 Broadick. 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 Macccan dress shoes. his the closest
it came was like 5 to 7 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, the 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. And so it's not surprising that this case cooled off pretty
quickly, which was so frustrating for Peggy's family. And you know, it's so like 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 want to give our listeners a sense of it. So, if you would read what was published about
her. Police identified her as Peggy Hetch, 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. M 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. And I 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 2 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 like 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 2 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 and her 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 be a family to an abyss like going into the ocean. you can't breathe and you just sink a way
far away uh without stopping. And so now your life is changed forever. What do you do? You know,
um yeah, 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 I said, "What?" So Tom and his dad, they end 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 want to come get it like we'll probably
just get rid of it like up to you. Which the only thing police would have that's belong to Peggy is evidence
fully evidence. But he's like yeah I mean we'll take anything you have. So he goes down to the police station. and
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
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 Brick is still convinced that Tim Masters killed Peggy. And in
all that time, or 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.
like, "Well, this is weird." I report to the master at arms master at arms office the next day and uh the the
E4 that that's assigned to to escort me somewhere is like, "Should I put him in handcuffs?" They're like, "No, no,
that's not necessary." And 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 Fort Collins Police. Howal Dean, Jim
Brick, and Linda Wheeler. And I I proceeded to endure about a day and a half of interrogations.
I didn't recognize them, right? I didn't know Lind Linda Wheeler. Um I didn't recognize him until So, so
Jim Broadick had this habit of wearing like reddish color 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 5 years later I'm still
being harassed over this. I didn't have anything to do with this." And then but I was still under the
mindset of uh especially I'm just an E4 in the Navy. I I really respect I really
treated authority with respect and Lind Linda Holloway. Well, she's Linda Willer
at the time. Jim Barrick, 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 with uh 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 Brick 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, 27year-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 even reached 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 uh he
handcuffed me and as as he's taking me out the door, Jim Brick meets me there and he goes, "You're under arrest for
the murder of Peggy Hedrickk." And I went, "Yeah, what the hell? You've got to 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?"
That'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 Brick provided me
with um approximately 2,200 pages of drawings and narratives produced by this young man uh before and immediately
after the sexual homicide. This is a voluminous amount of material. In my uh 18 years of doing this kind of work, I
have never seen uh 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 6 months on the case, I felt I understood
the motivations for this homicide and that I had become convinced uh that Timothy Masters was the individual that
had committed uh 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 mattress, which mattress 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 he
loved his mom, right? Like we haven't talked about his mom though because by the time Peggy was murdered his mom had
been dead for 4 years and it was really unexpected. Like his mom got sick. His dad was like I'm going to 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 4
years to the day of Peggy's murder. So, their theory becomes that he's out there
in this field for some reason in the early 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 his mom doesn't have red hair, Ashley.
But 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, but not
because they're doing a bad job because there's nothing else to like, right? Refute.
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. And then the the jury came out and I
kind of knew something was off. They would none of the jury would make eye contact with me. I'm like, "Oh god." And
then the judge asked, "Have you reached reached a verdict?" And the the four person on the jury says, "We have." And
they hand it to the judge and the judge reads it. Tim Masters, you have been found guilty. And so the media at the
time described me as being completely emotionless as the verdict is read. It it 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
that 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's like a world ending event. Like your life is over.
Over the past year, Brett, we've covered more potential and confirmed wrongful convictions than I think ever before.
And we've been really fortunate to like play some roles in I mean like James Ryos's exoneration. We just this last
year did a $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
like didn't understand a conviction just based on drawings, but they had this mentality of something that we've said
on the show before, like, well, there must be something the police know that we don't know.
They couldn't have taken him to trial, convicted him on. They wouldn't have arrested him just on that. But they
could, they would, and they did. And so Tim gets carded off to Buenav 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 like took any optimism out of him, but lawyers couldn't get these
things through the court system. like 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 I mean 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 even on the inside? and she got so discouraged that she ended up
turning in her badge. She had a complete career change cuz 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 cuz 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 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 him 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, "Well, do you
think he's possibly innocent?" And I said, "Yeah, I really do, but what can I do? You know, I'm done. I'm not even a
cop anymore." And he said, "I uh well," he said, "I I've talked with him. I or I
just communicated with him by uh 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 cuz I don't read legal ease." 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 um uh Maria Lou, who was Tim's attorney, and uh 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 cuz 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
going to 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 freaking 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 sus
stuff happening that Fort Collins PD has recused themselves. Lammer 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,
Selman Richard come to the US. They do this like 4hour 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 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 like
stuff the evidence. They're like you shouldn't have this. He's like I know. So they like 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. Like 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 you destroying things, then 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 going to 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 um in the like first month of the investigation, you know, the newspaper 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. Literal fake news on his doorstep. Mhm. And their whole theory about
mattress side, right, is Tim's like so upset about his mother's death that it caused all of this.
So clearly they like know that he would be upset. They had like his mother's obituary reprinted like 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 1-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 like he might kill someone
again." M. 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 going to do? He says, "I'll try and get you out here in a minute." So, he So, he
goes down. Then, he comes back a little bit later. Do they take me out? Oh, no. He He goes back down to talk about it.
Then the news comes on and there's an announcement from the special prosecutors in my case and they announce
that uh they're going to 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 out of here. I'm like, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
I'm going to 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 I go down to the case
manager's office. He calls my lawyer, Maria Lou, and she says, "You're out of 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 uh Oh, man.
It was It was weird. They they had uh my lawyers bought me a suit out of their own pocket and uh I got to wear a suit.
They talked the sheriff into letting 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 got to go back to the county jail and wait around while they
process you. And they they let them release me from the courthouse. and 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 judge's 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 22nd, 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 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 Brick 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 2 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 reelected, but they don't get
so much as a slap on the wrist. The other big win is for Tim is he gets to settle for about $10 million, 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 and just so you know, like those three weren't the only ones. Tim suit. He sued like the
city. He sued a lot of people. Those are 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
Brick, Jolene Blair, Terry Gilmore for a statement. Didn't hear back from Jim Brick. Jolene Blair said she didn't want
to talk about the case. Um 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, uh, obviously when we were like when we
look up people to like try and figure out where they are, we like try phone numbers, we try emails. Facebook is like
a great way to like reach people for comment. Um, it turns out now Jim Brick 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. We do know.
I know it. And and and I was like maybe I'm being like like a petty Betty, but when I told people on tour, the
collective like gasp, I was like, "Oh, no. Yeah, they're here for the Goss, too." So So they 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. She deserves that. Absolutely. It does make it really hard when I want to bring it up. Even with
like 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. When talking about people we should be
looking at, viable potential suspects, the first that comes up is Peggy's on again, off-again boyfriend, Matt Zner,
who was 29 in 1987. And every detective, I think, has their like person, right, that they look into
the most. And for Linda Wheeler, it is Matt. Now, Ray Martinez, one of the detectives we talked about who was like
first on the scene for Peggy's case last time, he said a lot of people were quick
to write Matt off. Maybe because of his behavior, like he was acting how they expected, maybe because he had an alibi.
If you remember, Matt said that he had met that woman, maybe Sean. Again, just met her, didn't even remember her name,
but he was with her till last call. Then she's at his place till like 3:00, 3:30
in the morning. And a lot of what you'll see about Peggy's death is that she died
between 1 and 3:00 a.m. which yes, Matt would have an alibi. Except when we got access to a lot of the investigative
files, what we realized is in the report, it's actually a wider range. I mean, they settle on 1 to 3, but the
true range of time is between 1:00 a.m. and 5 a.m., meaning that there's potentially an hour and a half, 2 hours
that Matt is unaccounted for if she died like in those like later time frame. The
other thing, which I haven't told anyone yet, been saving this up my sleeve, is that when Peggy was found, in her purse
was a note that she had written to Matt. Seemingly that very evening, she died. And so, Brit, I'm going to have you read
the note. Matt, I need your help. Sharon has got my keys and isn't home. No answer. If I have to knock on your door
at 2, please don't be a grump. I don't want to spend the night sleeping in the hall. Peg, but this note is in Peggy's
bag. Like, Matt doesn't have it. No, no, this is in her bag. And so there are a couple of lines of thinking around
this. So we know she gets locked out, right? So I think everyone's thinking she gets locked out. She writes this
note and then one of two things happens. Either she goes and like puts this on Matt's door and then she goes out, she
ends up getting back into her place and then goes back to Matt's and collects the note because she no longer needs to
show up at his place at 2:00 a.m. Or she writes the note, goes out, ends up getting back into her place before she
ever drops the note off. Doesn't need the note at all. she's in. It doesn't even matter anymore and it's
like a moot point. It's like living in her purse and maybe she forgot about it. I don't know.
And did Matt see the note? Like what did he say about it? That's well that's the thing. So based
on the files that I've seen, it doesn't appear like they ask him about it, which
like maybe they're just writing it off, but to me it feels like it feels really interesting. Like did did she plan on
coming to your place? Did you know she was planning on coming? Did she mention it to you? Like
something. Yeah. Right. And we know they spoke and that like him her coming to his house was
never a part of the story he told when they spoke. So just a reminder of his story. So Matt actually lived even
closer to the prime minister than Peggy did. So there are like you know two possibilities here. So Matt drove that
night cuz he was kind of boopping around to different places. And he said that when he got to the prime minister, Peggy
was arriving at the same time. They are like at the bar. They're chatting for a little bit like everything's normal. And
then his date, this girl he's supposed to meet up with comes again. Maybe Shawn is her, he thinks is her name. They just
met that night. And he says that he offered Peggy a ride. She said yes originally, but then like at some point
in the evening, he went to the bathroom. He's coming out. Peggy's leaving. So he's like, "Oh, she must have changed
her mind." Whatever. He stays till last call with maybe Shawn. And then they go back to his place till 3:00 or 3:30.
Now, he does tell police though that even though their conversation was normal, it was great. She made mention
Peggy did that she was seeing someone new during this time which he thought police should know
which you haven't mentioned that at all. So my question is like was she actually
seeing someone or was she seeing her on again off-again boyfriend Matt with someone new? She's like
oh I too am newly in love. He's so hot and so rich, so tall, better looking than you.
Don't even worry about me. like was she bluffing? I don't know. I don't know. So, there's
like some indications that maybe she was seeing someone like casually. I think it's also important to know that like
Matt is that guy she would always go back to there in Colorado. And so much so that I found out that earlier in that
week, I mean, they had had dinner together. Also, apparently though, as far as I can tell, not something that
police asked him about, which is like seems like a miss to me because like like they're very much in each other's
lives and like what did you talk about? What were the days leading up to it? I don't know.
Well, and the police don't ask about the note. They don't ask about this dinner within like the week before she died.
Did they even ask about his alibi? They did. They did check his alibi. They found Maybe Shawn and our reporter Emily
actually found her all these years later and spoke to her. Turns out maybe Shawn,
her name is actually Dawn. Matt, you were so close. So close. Um, and her story is interesting. It
adds a little bit of context, a little bit of color. She says that they really did just meet earlier that night. They
had saw each other in another bar. And she said they recognized each other because Matt like a while ago had sold
her a car. So, like they'd been in the same orbit before, but didn't even know each other's names clearly.
Yeah. She said Matt came over to her and was like, "Hey, you know, when you're done
with your friend, you should come to Prime Minister and hang out with me." Which is what she did. She says she
shows up later in the evening and when she walks in, Matt is talking to this other woman who she figures out later is
Peggy. Didn't know Peggy at the time. And she says she kind of hangs back for a little while and waits. But a couple
minutes go by, he's still talking. So, she decides to approach him. As soon as she approaches, Peggy like turns at the
bar and starts talking to the guy next to her. And so Don just made the assumption that Peggy was with that
other guy. And Matt doesn't introduce Dawn or anything. He just is like, "Hey, go get a table." So Don goes to get a
table for four, thinking that maybe the other couple is going to join them. But just Matt comes back and she says she
didn't ask him about it. She didn't even ask him about the woman when she realized Matt's like kind of keeping an
eye on her all night. Like they just met. She doesn't know the history, but like she's not going to dig too deep.
They're like having a decent time. And they do they stay till last call. She goes home with Matt. They talk, they
kiss a little. She says the night ends for like a combination of reasons like, you know, he's doing the like, oh, like
I got to work in the morning. And then he also makes this comment about how he hates kids. Like not like dislikes kids,
like hates them. And Don is like, well, I have one of those, so this probably isn't going to work out. And so she ends
up leaving. But when she talked to us, there was something else that she told us that really stood out to her. She
said that when she was in his apartment that night, it felt strange because she said it was so clean. Like not just
clean for a boy kind of apartment, but like she's like, "I couldn't find, you know, a piece of clothing on the closet
floor. I there was not a fork to be found in the sink." like it felt like no one lived there,
which was weird at the time, whatever. But she said what was really strange for her was that police brought her back at
some point years later and they were asking her questions about Matt's apartment specifically,
and they were asking her like, "Had you seen a broken coffee table? Had you seen
some spots on the floor?" And they're like showing her pictures of the apartment. I I think like you, we talked
about this. were like originally imagining like a shattered coffee table. Yeah. When I hear broken table, it is a
broken table. Very obviously. It's like this like piece of wood propping up one of the legs.
Like one of the legs is broken and now it has a piece of wood. Fully something my husband would like do
and then be like it's fine for years if it was his apartment. Yes. So, and then the spots like they're not
like overtly blood or anything. There's just a couple of them. I don't know if they ever get those tested. And again,
Don is saying, "No, I never saw any of that." because again it's so clean. But she said that wasn't even really the
takeaway for her. As they're showing her these pictures, the takeaway for her is
like that's not the apartment I was in, which it was like full body chills when she was telling us that. And it's not
like it was a completely different. She said it looked the same. The layout was the same, but this one looked lived in.
So lived in. I mean, if you see the pictures, there's like laundry everywhere. There's like stuff on the
counters. Like make no mistake, this dude lives here. Which I don't want to discredit Don's memory at all, but like
we know human memory is incredibly flawed. There's a million statistics on it. I won't go through all of them, but
there's one from the Innocence Project that's something like 70% of wrongful convictions are like come down to
witness misidentification or misremembering. And that's like in the most perfect of
circumstances, right? Like in this case, like it's in the middle of the night, it's dark.
they'd been drinking like this. And when they're showing her these pictures, I mean, this is like years later, too.
So, yes. I mean, there could be like I I don't even know what to like make of this memory other than it's just so
strange. But there were other strange things about Matt as well. Like when they went to talk to him the first like
day or two after they found Peggy, they did search his car in his place and apparently they seized some wet clothes
and shoes from his car and wet clothes from his apartment and not like damp. I mean, they said it looked like he had
gone swimming in these things. But strangely, like a couple of days later, Matt comes asking for those
things back and they just give them back. Like, sorry we didn't like wash and fold them for you. I mean, you say
strangely, but a couple days later, they were all in on Tim. I know. I know. But when you think about
like at some point, I don't know what was happening years later. I think it was like the probably the grand jury.
They're looking at these pictures, they're asking Dawn about them. I think the implication
was, did something happen in Matt's apartment after Dawn left? Right? Like, we got this maybe one and a half to two
hours. Did a table break? Did these spots come after you left the house? I point that out specifically because
there's one other thing that they collected early on that I think is important. Outside of Matt's apartment,
they also found some footprints that matched the shoes Peggy was found in when she was killed and a pile of like
11 cigarette butts in the brand that Peggy was known to smoke, which outside of his place,
which the shoe prints I can kind of like excuse, right? Like she has this note. She might have been there to drop it off
to then to pick it up. So, she was in her purse like, okay, but the cigarette butts like that is
a stakeout amount of cigarette butts. I know. I know. And when they talk to her friends, and this is like the little
piece that comes out in that like when I talk about the 2D image of her in the newspaper, when they talk to her
friends, her friends did say, you know, it wouldn't have been that unusual. She gets jealous of like when it comes to
Matt. It wouldn't have been weird if she saw him with another woman that night and then she went to his place to we
know she left ahead of them. Did she stake it out to see if he brought Dawn home? Did she stay and see if Dawn
stayed or or if Dawn left? And if she was still there when Dawn left, then did something happen? Was there a
confrontation at Matt's apartment? The problem with that is it doesn't fit the theory that the
attack happens in the field. I know like there's there's pieces that are missing because in my mind like if
something happens with Matt like it is a heat of the moment like passion thing. It's hard for me to imagine a world
where either something happens in his apartment or even he like gets her in the car and then takes her to this place
where someone could see something, takes her out of the car, stabs her, drags her
like it like I can't I can't make it up. It doesn't make sense. And I guess my question too is was Matt a violent
person? Was their relationship volatile? Cuz they've been on and off for a while.
Like was there a history of that? There's nothing like reported that I can find in Matt's like criminal history. He
doesn't have anything violent. I mean, there's like some DUIs and stuff like that, but no like domestic charges,
nothing like that. So, which is why I go back to I think if something happened between them, it was heat of the moment,
but like it's just it's hard for me to imagine it happening at Matt's. And then if not, it's hard for me to imagine how
Matt gets her in the middle of that field. I mean, the biggest question, does Matt
have Tom McCann shoes? No. So, they didn't find any Tom Macccan dress shoes. They they did take note of like a pair
of boots that were like propped up against his couch, but Don says those were the boots he was wearing the night
Peggy died. They're not the prints that match anything in the field. And I get the sense that like those were his nice
shoes. Like he he didn't have a dress shoe guy, right? And so maybe for all of those
reasons, he didn't have Tom McCann's. He maybe had an alibi. He was acting how they expected him to act. Early on,
people wrote him off. Even though he too, like Tim, failed a polygraph. And he failed the question, "Do you know who
killed Peggy Hetrick?" Like the question. Yeah. But the polygrapher decided that
he was probably telling the truth. And so that's Matt. Now, the other person we came across in the case file was a guy
named Donnie Long. So, the same year that Peggy was murdered, there were two more murders. 39-year-old Linda Hol was
stabbed nine times, bound, gagged, tied to a tree. Now, like Peggy's case, there
was no sexual assault, but unlike Peggy's case, there was no mutilation to Linda. Then a couple of months after
her, 30-year-old Mana Hughes is murdered. She's stabbed 14 times. No sexual assault. Again, though, no
mutilation. Now, pretty quickly, police kind of pull Peggy out of this, even though you've
got three cases that happen within 9 months of each other, within 30 m in an area that doesn't really see violent
crime. Well, and all the victims are like kind of in the same age range, 37, 39, 30. My
crime junkie brain goes their last names all start with H. Hedrick accuse Holt. That's Deck investigates frame.
I know. But like I I think it's the about the mutilation. I think that's the why very early on they were like Peggy
doesn't fit in this pattern and they end up finding the guy responsible for Linda
and Mana. They end up getting this Donnie Long guy. Donnie ends up confessing to Linda and Mana's murders.
So they at least do the bare minimum though and like when he confesses to these they like circle back and they're
like, "Hey, you're saying you did these two things. Did you do this other thing?" He's like, "No, I didn't." And
they're like, "Okay, thank you. Bye." Like truly the bare minimum. And we're just out here like believing
serial killers like that. This is not the first time we've seen this happen, but it always
confuses me, shocks me. This happened recently where I'm like working on this case out of Washington that I've been
working on for like 2 years and me and one of our reporters, Emily, we had a call with the FBI cuz we're like,
"Listen, we're not saying it's Israel Keys, but here's like 20 things we find very odd that we like feel like someone
other than us should know." And the the agent was like, "Yeah, like okay, we'll talk to you, but like we
don't need to hear it. He only killed four people in the state." And I'm like, "Wait, how do you know he only killed
four people in Washington? I feel like that's like news. And he's like that he told us that.
And I was like, Israel Keys told So of all the bad guys to believe, we're believing
Israel Keys. Israel Keys. Okay. So he said he didn't do it. So they think he didn't do it. We tried to write
to him when he was in prison just to see if he would talk to us. We haven't heard
back from him. Which brings me to the third person I want to go deep into. And I told you everyone has like their
person like detectives. And for Ray Martinez, this next one is his. And for me, he's the person whether or not he
had anything to do with Peggy's case, I am very interested in cuz I think there is a much bigger story behind him. And
that is local opthalmologist Dr. Richard Hammond. Now, in 1987, this dude is raising no
red flags. He has a thriving practice. He has a wife, two teenage kids, like living the American dream. Except for,
you know, the one red flag they raised about Tim in that he lived really close to the crime scene. In fact, you could
see the crime scene from his primary bedroom window, but he wasn't doodling. No, God forbid. So, I mean, he was a
part of the initial canvas where they like came around. Did you see anything? Hear anything? Him and his wife were
home that night, but they didn't see or hear anything. And so, they moved on. Again, no red flags.
Plenty of red flags, though, come March of 1995. That's when a young woman at Colorado
State University found this note card on their like job board for someone who needed a housesitter. The Hammonds were
going out of town. She was going to come housesit. She brought her friend with her and, you know, she's getting the
tour of the house. Your room will be in the basement. You can use this bathroom,
but you know, make yourself at home. Use the house, whatever. So, her and her friend are there. They're hanging out.
There's something weird about the basement bathroom. Like, they keep hearing something.
Now, I imagine if it were me and I was by myself, I would be like, I'll just use the
upstairs bathroom. But she's not alone. She has a friend with her, right? You got your crime junkie BFF
with you and you're like, "Today's the day. We're going to solve the mystery." Absolutely.
So, they start snooping around, right? Like they get a flashlight, they're going all around the bathroom and it's
like they turn the light on, they hear the sound, they turn the light off, there's no sound. On, off, on, off. And
I imagine that like one of them is like at the light and the other one's like, "Okay, sh." And like kind of darting
around the room trying to hear the sound from like where it's coming from. Well,
they end up getting a flashlight and they realize that there are cameras in the vents. Plural cameras.
Cameras. But the cameras aren't set up like in the bathroom. They're set up from the room next door. So, they go out
the hall and go to that room, but the door the knob is like won't turn. It's locked. And again, if I were alone, I'd
be like, "Is this where I stop?" But you have your BFF with you. I don't know how
to pick a lock, but I'm about to find out. So, they get their paper clips, whatever. And as they're like getting
ready to pick this lock, what they realize is that even though it was locked, the knob wouldn't turn. When it
was pulled shut, it didn't latch all the way. So, all they have to do is push it
open. And when they go inside, they see cameras, they see recording equipment, they see filing cabinets and a quote
uncountable amount of videotapes. And that's when the one girl freezes and she's like, I think we need to phone a
friend. Yeah. Like I think they're hoping that this isn't as bad as they think it is.
But when they phone this friend and they call somebody who used to be a cop, he quote knows a lot about videotapes. very
1995. But he gets here and he's like, "No, this is worse. Um, we need to call the
real police." Quickly, the real police descend on this place. And it's just worse than you could have imagined. I
mean, they they even find this index on top one of the filing cabinets, and it's
like got ages, names, dates. Is it a shower shot? Is it a toilet shot? Is it a close-up shot? And when I say
close-up, this isn't just someone sitting on the toilet. I mean, this is zoomed into their genitals.
And many of these names on the list are minors, like kids his kids go to school with. Well, and with the close-ups, it
it makes me think of like Peggy. I mean, she was she had genital mutilation. I know. And that's not the only like
thing they're piecing together. So, like because this is happening in the same place, it's a lot of the same people who
were called for Peggy's case, one of them being Sergeant Ray Martinez. And he says when he first gets this call to
respond, he's like, "Hammond?" Like, "Why do I know the name Hammond?" And then it hits him. He's like, "During our
canvasing, we went to his house." And then all of a sudden, he's like putting the pieces together.
So, I'm tying this together. Weird cameras. uh crime scene near the crime scene back
then and he's a doctor and guess what we find in his closet. We start looking through his closet and we find Tom
McCann's shoes. Boy, does that ever ring a bell. And so we called up Brick, this
other detective did, and he refused to come out. He wouldn't come to the scene. He said, "No, we
already know who done it. That's a moot point. Basically, when Jim Rodri said that and the officer told me
about it, I I was angry about it because me as a past detective, you don't overlook anything. You know, you flip
over every stone that you can. You might be wrong where your lead was. Maybe this
is something different. Why not look at what's it going to hurt? Right? But he refused to come out. So I told the
officer there, I said, "Let's just seize everything. Let's seize the tapes, seize
the camera, seize those Tom Macccan shoes, you know." So we did. We collect our own evidence and turned everything
in and it never went anywhere. And I think a day or two days later, he's found dead in a hotel in in Denver. They
said, from what I've learned that when they found him, his whole body was shaved. He shaved all the hair off his
head and his body, complete body, and disposed of it. So that to me is weird other than he didn't want any trace
evidence linked to him. Why would you do that if you didn't think you might have
left something behind at a scene? That to me is also weird. Mhm. Full-on naked mole rat in a hotel room.
Dude, I don't know what to think of this. I if you like look at what the people around him said who were like
supportive of him in a way saying like he couldn't do anything violent they would say that he was very into
bodybuilding I you know I still try and find like old archives of like were there competitions
like was this something he was actively doing for how long cuz like I want to know is this guy nar smooth all the time
or just on this day that he died feels important I don't know but the people who
supported him and support's the wrong word because nobody was like well we'll get there but his wife basically was
like I didn't know like any of the videotape stuff was happening but he's not capable of something violent
but how would she even know like she didn't know about the tapes like how would she even have any idea of what
he's capable of and that's the thing I like I have such a hard time understanding like we tried
reaching out to her we we weren't able to get in touch but I I don't know how like she was because she said she was
totally blindsided. She like didn't have any idea what was happening in her home,
which is just like quick PSA to people like if your husband has a locked room in the basement.
Maybe go in it of Yeah. of the home you share, you're allowed to ask questions. But I don't
know what their dynamic was. I don't know. But but though she paints like, you know, when they gave her immunity
deal to talk, she paints like a very vanilla picture of their life. She says that like she would make dinner from
scratch. He'd come home at 7:00 p.m. They'd eat dinner together as a family. their kids would do homework and then
like they wouldn't even watch TV like they were, you know, all American family. I don't think PBS was showing what
Hammond was into. I don't think so either. But anyways, it see like again, she didn't, at least
from what I've seen, didn't give any indication that there was like dark parts of her marriage. It she was
surprised by this. So, he gets arrested. He gets released on a $5,000 bond. And it's when he's released that he goes to
that Denver hotel and he dies by suicide. He has a cyanide drip to his leg that I mean is so corrosive it gets
like down to the bone. And it's interesting the way that things play out after he dies because when I say like
people like supported him, there were people who kind of came out of the woodwork and there was like this battle
when you look at the newspapers of like reporters reporting on what happened and
then people saying that they shouldn't because it's just making things worse. And it kind of all starts with Richard's
suicide notes. I'm going to have you read that. The media frenzy surrounding my arrest
has caused immeasurable harm to many people, especially my family. I have lost everything, but I cannot survive
the loss of my wife and son and daughter. My death should satisfy the media's thirst for blood so that
hopefully everyone else who has been affected by this case can truly begin the process of healing.
I love redacted family names very much. I am truly sorry for hurting you so deeply. Rich Hammond. So he puts it on
the media that yes, I did this thing but like I have to die because they're so bloodthirsty. They like they're making
this bigger than it has to be and they're hurting people and like I'm just going to go away because of what they
are doing. Well, and not even what he did. He says like who has been affected by this case,
not by what he did. True. That's true. So then this is when the back and forth comes and there are
people who come out in support of what he said and like the media should just stop. We should drop it. Like there's
this active campaign to just make this go away. And just to prove the point, I want you to read something. Not the
whole thing, but part of what was written by a woman named Pam Hurley Nagel in in the paper. It saddens me
that the Colorado and other media flits chose to feast on Richard Hammond's tragic plight. I don't condone his
alleged behavior which was limited to the privacy of his own home. Collective gasp. That is like the craziest part to
me. Yeah. But the media exploited a man and his family's vulnerability. Don't think anybody else's vulnerability
was Rich Hammond was a man and doctor who took time to replenish his society with
quality medical care. What he allegedly did was wrong, but in the scheme of things, the hurt he caused
was exaggerated after the media got its predatory clause in it. Was it? Here's the thing. I don't think that's a
question we can answer because of how things unfold next. So, after his arrest and his death, they
continue to find more things. They find a secret storage unit no one knew about with Rubbermaid tub after Rubbermaid tub
of more videotapes, pornographic materials, receipts, sex toys. They find out he had a secret bank account that
people didn't know about. He they find this like waist belt contraption that like hooked onto his belt and had all
these little like sharp instruments that came out of it. Like what do you need that for? But the reason I say we don't
know the extent is because after all this is collected everything from his home from this storage unit
it is all taken and over the course of like 8 hours burned like completely destroyed
and Jim Brick like like some people were at least asking questions about this and
our guy Jim Brick is back to give a quote to the Denver Post about why they destroyed all of this evidence in this
case and he said quote should we revictimize all these women by telling them they are victims.
So really it's an effort to protect them to preserve these victims rights. Oh Ashley words are important to me they're
important to you. They're important to our crime junkies. What he's saying here like I cannot make sense of it.
revictimizing them by telling them they're victing. And the thing I have the biggest problem
with is this idea, the last line to preserve these victim's rights. That's why we destroyed this
by destroying it and not like with their permission or anything. I say like I get as a victim like
wanting those tapes to be destroyed. If that existed of me, I wouldn't feel safe
even with a tape like that locked in an evidence locker. But I'd want the choice.
Yeah, they didn't have it. They made the choice for them to preserve their rights. But by destroying it, what they
did was actually take away any future right they might have for repercussions. They can no longer go after Hammond's
estate. Were there other people on those tapes? We'll never know that they could
go after because by the way when they destroyed everything. They had not viewed most of it. Like they just took
it all away without knowing what was on the majority of those tapes, which is bananas to me. And the whole way that
these were destroyed. When they looked into this, this went against every policy and procedure they had in place
about how to deal with evidence. It just all goes up in smoke. Literally, they burned it. Yes. And listen,
Jim Brick would have you believe that they did this for a noble reason. And I do think there are people out there
doing noble things for noble reasons. I haven't seen a whole lot of them. Love to me more.
Yes. But in the theme of always going a layer deeper, which is our new crime junkie
life rule, I like to ask not just what happened, but why do we think it happened?
Well, here's a fun fact. In the couple of days between when Hammond was arrested, but before he died, they were
having to think about like taking this to a trial. Like, there could be a case around this.
And they were going to have to appoint a special prosecutor because they quickly
found out that members of the DA's office, quote, had been guests at Hammond's home and may have been
videotaped. Oh, I think we have our reason for why all of that evidence was destroyed.
But they are quick to write this off. Like same way when like when Tim, right, when he gets exonerated, they're like,
"Let's just make this go away." And when this happened, they wanted this to go away. So much so that they were even
writing off stories that made no sense. Like people were like, "Oh, he he wouldn't have hurt Peggy because like he
didn't even use a scalpel." Yes, he was a doctor in surgical precision, all that, but he didn't even use scalpels.
But like a guy who he ran the practice with was like, "Yeah, we absolutely do." And there's an affidavit from a woman
who's like, "He literally use a scalpel on me." And just to show you how far under the rug they were pushing this
thing, everything in the paper like at the time was about the videootapes or whatever.
Nobody publicly was connecting this guy to Peggy Hatrick in 1995. And nobody was
telling Peggy's family about him, even behind the scenes. Tom didn't find out about Dr. Hammond until years later and
the way he found out was bananas. I remember a few years ago they talked about a doctor. I was coming out of the
village in with my friend and he looked at the news box, Rocky Mountain News and
had Peggy's picture on the front cover of the newspaper and he said, "Hey Tom, that's your sister." And so he got the
newspaper. We went back into the village and I read it. I skimmed over it. I went, "What? Who is this doctor? You
know, nobody's ever told me about this guy. So, the defense never knew about any of
that. Not just the Hammond stuff, but like so much of what we've talked about. And in looking at the file, when I say
there's more to be done, I mean, I also was coming across names of people it doesn't seem like they really dug into.
A guy named Greg Casease, who she was like dating at the time. Derek Cordova, who had she had gone out with in the
past, a guy named Tim Matthews, who apparently liked Peggy and was jealous of Matt. And I'm not saying those guys
had anything to do with anything, but to me, those are people who were clearly close to her, who hung out with her, who
maybe were with her in like times leading up to her death. They were in her circle.
I know. And so, when I say that more can be done, like I don't think we can just
rely on DNA and like call it quits. I think there's going to have to be leg work. And I think there's still a lot of
leg work that can be done even decades later, right? But we know that Tim was exonerated in part by the DNA evidence.
So like whatever happened to those partial matches? So that we did get some partial profiles
and none of those matched him. So there were some important ones. There was one on the front waistband of Peggy's
underwear. And everything we have comes from touch DNA, right? There's there was
no like semen or bodily fluids. And I think their thinking was that the killer likely was the one who pulled her pants
down. So maybe they'd get touch DNA. Then they got some samples from under her arms, coat, boots, pants. There was
a single full profile on her sleeve, but like guess what? It turned out to be the
police who weren't wearing gloves. Cross that one out. And while it hasn't been on record that they've gotten DNA from
like all three of the people I've talked about, right? Matt Zolner, Donnie Long,
Richard Hammond. I do know that they got one person's DNA for comparison, and it
is comparison, right? There's no full profile to put into Cotus. And one of those three people did match
the touch DNA on the underwear. Not all the places, but the touch DNA on the underwear. And that was Matt Zulner. So,
we have this partial match on one of the samples. Why isn't that DNA alone enough
to charge him? Right? Like, if it was Tim's, right, it totally would have been. That's the
question a lot of people are asking. And for Linda, she thinks it should be enough.
I want Matt Zer to know that I'm still after him. I want him to know to make up some little hiccup or something that in
his life that he'll make a mistake that we can catch him on. But it's like I just when I when I I I know who did it
and he's not held accountable and he's been free for 30ome years that uh the attorney general did all they could and
I really felt that they did. But it's like but I'm not done and I I don't I don't want to be silenced. there's still
a wrong that was done and I still feel like something might good might come out of of this case getting reopened and and
refocused on that there's somebody might come up with something that's said or done that we didn't know about that
allows us to take this case further and keep it open. Now, I think it's important to note I I
don't think that at this point you can take a case to trial just based on that one piece of DNA. There's a lot that has
to be explained at this point. I mean, and again, it's touch DNA. You don't know how it got there, when it got
there, and it's only one of the profiles that was found on her. Yes. And we know that they had contact,
right? Like they're going to dinner. They like they saw each other that night. I think it is important. I think it is
meaningful and I think that is like when you talk about a lead that tells you where to focus. I I think that's telling
you where to focus. However, there is other DNA that's going to have to be explained away. There is you're
going to have to prove it in a court of law and there's leg work that can be done. You also have when you when I
think about DNA, the Missy Woods of it all. If anyone remembers our John Bane Ramsay episode, there is a a DNA tech in
Colorado who from like was there from '90s to 2023. Her name's Missy Woods. And she was like
there was like like not following protocol, mishandling evidence, not storing things correctly,
like not necessarily falsifying things, but really mucking up the system. So all of her cases are getting called
into question. I don't know if she touched this. And I know we sent some stuff to Holland, but stuff was stored
in Colorado. Some of it was tested in Colorado. Again, I'm only saying all of this because while I think this DNA is
important, you are going to have to back it up with leg work. Well, and for me, like Matt doesn't have
this history of violence, even if it was something that happened in the heat of the moment, she was mutilated with like
surgical precision. I know that doesn't like you don't learn that in like a heat of the moment situation.
We asked about that and and people who believe that um Matt did this, they think that maybe he was trying to like
throw people off his trail by doing that. But the precision of it. I know. I know. And listen, who's to say
there isn't a world where someone killed Peggy and then someone else came along and did something, right? Like
Richard Hammond had insomnia and could see that field from his bedroom window. I don't think he wants to call police
and alert them to what he's like doing in his you know what I mean? And I'm not saying I don't know. I don't know. But
it might not be the reason that a lot of things might not fit is because maybe there isn't just one answer. And another
problem that we're going to face when it comes to like making a case is that like
you will have this Richard Hammond thing that is like very open-ended and it can never be buttoned up,
right? We don't know if Peggy was on one of those tapes because some powerful people made sure we would never know
what was on those tapes, who was on those tapes. And if you came to the live show, this is where we started to wrap
things up. But I mean, as a lot of people might have noticed by now, like the theme of these stories is going a
layer deeper. So, while Brit and I were on tour, I sent some of our reporters back to Colorado to do some more
digging, some more door knocking, and like boots on the ground work. Mostly because I couldn't shake the feeling
that there is more to this Dr. Hammond story, like as it relates to Peggy or like something else.
I don't know. the way that everyone made it go away so fast and like the operation we learned he had set up feels
so much bigger. So, we got our hands on some investigative reports from Hammond's case and I was disappointed to
see that police just straight up stopped investigating after he died. I mean, not surprised, but
disappointed. Again, they at the time they said it was all to protect the victims, blah blah
blah. But the question I have is like no one can say for sure that Hammond didn't
sell or share the tapes. What we learned is that his video setup was professional. It was elaborate and
his tape cataloges were organized like a library. And Hammond would even label the tapes by like date, by victim's
initials. But some of the tapes were also labeled ready. Ready for what? I don't know.
Distribution to go somewhere. Our reporting team tracked down one of Hammond's victims and she filled in some
blanks for us. And prepare to be disappointed yet again because she told us that not only did police never ask
their opinions on destroying the evidence, which we assumed, but when detectives were interviewing the
victims, they were asking these victims if they were in on it. like in on it. How exactly? The cops
were asking these teenage girls if they were performing for the cameras. Like, did anyone tell you where to stand and
like what to do? And on top of that, she said that Fort Collins PD never once offered to let these teen girls have a
parent or trusted adult in the room with them during their interviews. So, it just feels like the victims have never
once had a voice in that case. Like every decision was made for them, even after the cops basically treated them
like suspects. Oh, and remember how I told you like we found out that like there was a file that said some of the
DA's office had socialized at Hammonds, might be on the tapes, whatever. Well, when we finally got to track down
Judge Terry Gilmore, that was obviously one of the things we asked him specifically about. We weren't able to
talk to anyone else. And he confirmed that the destruction of the tapes did go against regular policy and he admitted
to knowing Dr. Hammond personally before his arrest, but he says that he only socialized with him one time and that he
was never at the doctor's home. And that's kind of where that ended. Okay. And then there's one more thing that I
want to mention before we wrap things up on Hammond. So, we got a hold of a woman
who in 1988ish went to the eye clinic where Hammond worked for an emergency. Like her son got like Sandy Snowball
lodged in his eye or whatever. Now, Hammond is not their regular doctor, but he was the one on call that weekend. So
they're alone in the eye clinic with him and Dr. Hammond was treating the boy. He's like 9 or 10. And his mom had to
use the restroom. So she went to the closest one that she could find, which was the men's stall, but Dr. Hammond
came and like physically blocked her from using the men's restroom, and he insisted that she had to use the women's
restroom. And she's like, "Okay, like whatever, dude." Yeah. And when she got inside and flipped the
light switch on, she heard this like worring. So, this is an 88. No one knows and
won't know for years about Hammond's secret taping hobby. And what they ended up determining at
his house is like it's the light switch. So, he like when you turn it on that triggered it to start recording. So, he
didn't even have to be there. And she's hearing this at his office. Now, she says in the moment she was certain it
was a camera. not even like years later, but in that moment, like specifically one of those big cameras from the 80s
that had that distinct sound when it turned on, specifically when it focused. And she even flipped the light switch
off because she was like so freaked out. She was like looking for a red light or
any sign that she was being recorded. Wait, did police find cameras at his practice? Or I mean, did they even
search it? So, it depends on who you ask. Ray Martinez told us that they didn't. Uh,
but our reporters found an old article at the CSU archives that said they did search the doctor's office, but that
article also had some other wrong information in it. So, I don't really know for sure
if we even know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Ray Martinez worked the case. So, like I want to trust him, but
like it's also been so many years. You never know. So, anyways, fast forward 7 years and this woman is like seeing the
headlines about Dr. Hammond's cameras in his basement and she's like she has this
like oh my god moment like it what what I thought was real. Did she tell the police about her
encounter? No, not right away. She said that once she realized Dr. Hammond had died, she
wasn't sure what could even be done. But as years went by, she kind of got curious as to whether she was on any of
the tapes. Then obviously she found out forcon speed had destroyed them and that there
was no way of knowing which tells me again that they burned all those tapes. Like it's more proof to me that they did
that before identifying all of the victims that they didn't want to revictimize by telling them they were
victims. Now, the only thing she was told by police was that there was some tapes
that looked to be in a different room than the bathroom. So, clearly somewhere else was being filmed. They never
followed up with her after that. So, who knows how many victims there were. And when Dr. Hammond died, the case just got
tossed. And even though he had been arrested and charged, when you go to the Justice Center in Fort Collins in
District Court, it basically looks like Richard Hammond never even committed a crime, which is like one of the most
bananas part I think about the whole thing. Yeah, it just went away. Literally disappeared. And I think it
might take friends in high places to make that happen. So still looking into Hammond. I will forever be looking into
Hammond. But there was one other thing that came up as we were touring. So, another man named Randy Angland, his
name popped up because there was a note on one of Tim's lawyers like papers or something that just said Angland cut off
nipples too, which feels like an important note in this case, especially is what we're looking for,
right? So, we're looking into him still kind of actively. We found out that he was on this crime spree from 77 to 87 in
northern Colorado, specifically really active in ' 87 for burglaries, sexual assaults. I haven't found any cases
where a nipple was removed yet, but we did get some records and those he's like clearly escalating. And there is a tip
in Peggy's case about a car with Wyoming license plates like near the area at the
time she died and he had a car with Wyoming license plates. So again, more to be done on him, more to be done on
everything, which is the whole point of this story is to tell people that I think it'd be really easy for for police
to say like, oh, or the DA's office, whatever. Like, it's a we we tried everything we can. It's a closed case.
There's still more that can be done and it's so obvious. But for some reason after Tim was released, after he won his
like settlement, it just stopped. Now Tim did go on to write a book about his case that he self-published. And I
mean, in all these years, he's been trying to make up for lost time. He likes to work on cars. He works with
horses. He's spending time with people he loves. He's making up for lost time with them. and he even has an unexpected
confidant these days. I think it is really ironic that the the former lead investigator in the case who
came to arrest me in 1992 is actually one of my dearest friends now, Linda Holloway.
Turns out she's a really good person. She put herself out there so much. Linda Holloway put herself out there so much
to do the right thing. It just for one and she it greatly endear me to her. I'm not good with good at words,
but it's very endearing that she did that. She put herself out there for me and it just speaks volumes to her
integrity. She's she's just one of those people that will do she'll do the right
thing regardless. She just has she does the right thing. That's a rare person in
this world. I mean, a lot of people wouldn't go out on a limb like she did. They would just
go with the grain. Life would have been a lot easier for her if she had just gone with the grain and not not gone
gone against everybody else. As for Peggy's brother, Tom, he was diagnosed 2 and 1/2 years ago with stage
4 colon cancer, which he said is what has made him so vocal. He is one of Peggy's only remaining family members
fighting for her and now he needs us to like take up that torch and fight for her.
I said, "You guys have had 30ome years to do your job." And I said, "Obviously at this point you're telling me the case
is closed." And I said, "But the fella upstairs is going to they're not getting by him. He
already knows who it is and he'll take care of this problem." and they just all their all their faces just turned white.
And I said, "He'll he will get the final say. You've had your chance." And uh and I said, "What's it going to
take to reopen this?" Cuz they told me it was closed. And they said, "Short of a full confession, nothing."
I said, "You what?" and they said unless somebody actually comes forward and admits to it completely
and and fully uh we can't reopen this case. And I just I was as far as I was concerned with that meeting I was done.
I wanted to get out of there because for over 30ome years we I've waited around for something to to take place for this
and then they take somebody and they put him in prison for 9 years and he's innocent as the driven white snow and
they ruin his life to a certain extent and then he gets out and and rightfully so and and here we are. Here we are
today, right now, doing this interview, 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? What? Move on. Well, you're I don't have much longer to
go because I have a disease that'll take my life soon and I want something done about I want the people that have the
ability to do their job to get busy and do their job. That's what they need to do instead of just turning a blind eye.
Well, you know, it is what it is. Case closed. There have been a lot of mistakes in
this case that I've learned through media, through the newspaper, from Linda, quite a bit from Linda. And uh
I'm not happy. I'm very upset about this. So, I don't have longer to go. So, I want something done about it
immediately. So, Crime Junkies, this is where you come in. Our team has spent months reporting on this case, producing
this live show. We've taken it to 17 different cities with a shared goal in mind, justice for Peggy Hedrickk. So,
we're asking you to join us in asking the Colorado Attorney General's office to reopen Peggy's case, assign a new
investigator, and explore new DNA testing. And we've made it super easy for you. All you have to do is click the
link below, fill out your information, and we're going to send an email on your behalf. Literally, it could not be more
simple. This is why we do this show and we know this is why you guys listen. So,
please take a moment. I know a lot of you who went to the show were experiencing technical difficulties. We
have um crashed the the attorney general's website more than once. So, this is your reminder. If you were at
the show and didn't get an email through, please do that now. And if you're listening, please either stop
what you're doing and do it now. Set a reminder. This is so important and Tom is really looking for your help. You can
find all the source material for this episode on our website crimejunkkeyodcast.com
and you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkkeyodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
[Music]

Today, we unravel the chilling 1987 murder of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins, Colorado, a haunting true crime case that remains unsolved. Her mutilated body was discovered by bicyclist Woody Hodgdon. Peggy’s death sparked a complex investigation led by Lieutenant Jim Broderick and Sergeant Ray Martinez, with unexpected developments involving Timothy Masters, Matt Zoellner, Dr. Richard Hammond, and Donald Kimball. We explore the roles of forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy, the Hettrick family, including Thomas Hettrick, and the controversial use of Explorer Scouts in the search for answers. Explore this gripping mystery with us, face the unanswered questions, and shed light on a relentless pursuit of justice.

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About Ashley Flowers Ashley Flowers is the top female podcaster in the U.S. and the host of Crime Junkie, the #1 podcast among women and the #1 true crime podcast globally. As the Founder of audiochuck, she has built a top-tier podcast production company that has garnered over 2.6 billion downloads, captivating audiences with its gripping storytelling through 10+ chart topping podcasts. Ashley and her team are dedicated to creating responsible true crime content that respects victims and their families.

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Brief Summary

The episode details Peggy Hedrick's murder, Tim Masters' wrongful conviction, and ongoing calls for justice from her brother Tom.

Key points

Tom Hedrick's Plea. Tom Hedrick, Peggy's brother, speaks out about the unresolved case and his own health struggles.
A Shocking Discovery. A 15-year-old boy mistook a body for a mannequin, leading to a chilling realization.
Tim's Drawings Become Evidence. Tim's violent drawings are discovered, raising suspicions about his involvement in a murder.
Peggy's Life and Tragic Death. A deep dive into Peggy's life reveals her brilliance and the tragedy of her untimely death.
The Fight for Justice. Tim's wrongful conviction sparks a community effort to address systemic issues.
Tim's Release. After nearly 10 years in prison, Tim is released when charges are dropped.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I'm not afraid of anything anymore. I can't be.

3:10WatchMay 30, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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