Fort Collins – The list of missing evidence behind the Tim Masters murder conviction grew Thursday as his defense attorneys disclosed that no one seems to know the location of an FBI profile cited in a damaging psychological analysis of their client.
Reid Meloy, a San Diego forensic psychologist for the prosecution in Masters’ 1999 trial for Peggy Hettrick’s murder, used the profile to create his theory that a 15-year-old Masters killed her 12 years earlier out of a rehearsal fantasy, according to his notes.
But Masters’ attorneys David Wymore and Maria Liu say Meloy, Larimer County prosecutors and Fort Collins police don’t have it.
“After a long and hard look I haven’t been able to find the FBI profile,” Meloy wrote to Liu.
Missing evidence coupled with a lengthy string of items not disclosed to Masters’ defense team – including evidence linked to a now-deceased eye surgeon who lived across the street from the crime scene and had a sexual fetish – are among the issues Masters contends justifies a new trial. His innocence bid is the subject of hearings in a Larimer County courtroom.
Among the other lost or destroyed pieces in the case are hairs found on Hettrick’s footwear and photos of 13 fingerprints taken from her purse items. Neither set of evidence, earlier analyses showed, matched Masters or Hettrick.
Excerpts of the FBI profile emerge in a 247-page binder of “extraction” notes Meloy used to build his psychological analysis. It painted a picture of a killer who was a loner with obsessive tendencies and may have lived near the crime scene. Among other psychological triggers, according to the so-called profile, the killer could have planned the murder to coincide with a “personally significant” anniversary.
Hettrick was killed within a day or two of the anniversary of Masters’ mother’s death – a detail Meloy seized on, including the fact that Hettrick, like Masters’ mother, had red hair.
Masters’ attorneys, including his original trial counsel Nathan Chambers, have assailed Meloy’s analysis as biased junk science.
The confusion over the profile stems in part from the fact that Meloy’s catalog of notes referencing it were never turned over to the defense. The psychologist asserts they were delivered to Detective Jim Broderick, who built the case against Masters. Masters’ post-conviction lawyers obtained them only after paying Meloy $1,000 for them.
On the stand for his third day of testimony for Masters’ new defense team, Chambers said the binder and the profile were among numerous “exculpatory” pieces that prosecutors were obligated to disclose to him under discovery rules. He condemned the prosecution, saying that their intent using Meloy was “to frame him, to pin it on him.”
Admission of Meloy’s controversial analysis of Masters was upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court but was harshly criticized Thursday. The psychologist never interviewed Masters.
“This was not an objective analysis by a scientist,” Chambers said, “but to validate the government’s theory.”
The prosecution is expected to present witnesses when the hearings resume Nov. 5.
