LAKEWOOD, Colo.—A special prosecutor said Friday that a man serving a life sentence in the slaying of a woman who was killed when the man was a teenager should get a new trial, citing DNA evidence pointing to another suspect.
Defense attorneys for Timothy Masters said they were working to have him released from prison as soon as possible.
“It is our belief as special prosecutors in this case… that this new evidence requires a vacation of the original conviction… and entitles Mr. Masters to a new trial,” special prosecutor Don Quick said.
Quick said details would be released Tuesday at a court hearing where he’ll ask that the conviction be vacated and that Masters be released. Defense attorney David Wymore said he hoped to have Masters out of prison by then. Wymore said Masters was aware of Quick’s recommendation.
Masters’ defense team had DNA evidence independently analyzed and found that it matched a different suspect, which was confirmed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in report Quick reviewed Friday afternoon.
A judge will decide whether Masters is released or granted a new trial.
The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News both reported Quick would recommend that Masters be released on a personal recognizance bond.
Masters, now 36, was 15 when the body of the victim, Peggy Hettrick a manager at a women’s clothing store, was found near his house. Masters’ attorneys this fall had been arguing for a new trial, citing problems with the 1999 trial that focused mostly on circumstantial evidence.
Troy Krenning, a former Fort Collins police detective who worked on the case, has long maintained Masters was not responsible for Hettrick’s death, citing what he said was a lack of physical evidence linking Masters at the scene or to Hettrick. As a teen, Masters was physically incapable of committing one of the most gruesome murders in Fort Collins, Krenning said.
“I have been in shock that it has taken this long to reach this conclusion,” Krenning said Friday. “This is a good day.”
Prosecutors based their case on a psychological analysis, violent pictures he had drawn, the fact that he lived 100 feet from where Hettrick’s body was found, and that police said he had seen the body but didn’t report it.
In a filing early this year, Quick said the original prosecutors improperly withheld documents from Masters’ defense team.
Hettrick, 37, was stabbed in the back, sexually mutilated and left in a vacant field in south Fort Collins in February 1987.
Masters, a high school student at the time, was the focus of the investigation from its first hours, but it wasn’t until 1998 that Fort Collins police detectives obtained an arrest warrant.
Part of Masters’ defense is that investigators may have overlooked a potential suspect, an eye doctor who lived nearby and who had a sexual fetish. Dr. Richard Hammond committed suicide in 1995 immediately after police accused him of secretly videotaping the genitalia of female visitors who used the bathroom at his home.
During his brief news conference Friday, Quick said DNA excluded Hammond as a suspect. Quick did not take questions.
Some of the wounds on Hettrick’s body originally were described by the county’s medical examiner as “surgical” in nature. Later that was changed to wounds of “mutilation” that could have been done by anyone with a knife and a desire.
Legal analyst Scott Robinson said it was unlikely Masters would be retried.
“There’s so much evidence pointing in other directions. I don’t think any prosecutor saddled with this case will be enthusiastic about dragging this back to court based on doodles,” Robinson said, referring to Masters’ drawings.
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Associated Press Writer Ivan Moreno contributed to this report.
